The Cotton Engineering program at Texas A&M, which is directed by the Chair of Cotton Engineering, Ginning, and Mechanization, focuses on teaching, research, and extension related to the engineering aspects of cotton production and processing. Specifically we are striving to address the needs of the cotton industry as it relates to machinery, electronics, data and related technologies. The scope of applications includes equipment and practices for cotton farming, ginning, transport, textile processes, quality measurement, data collection and analysis, etc. In summary, the mission of the Cotton Chair is to train students and develop and transfer innovative technologies within this scope.
The Cotton Chair was endowed in 1998 with a large gift from the Cotton Industry Support Group to the Texas A&M Foundation and a partial match from the H.R. “Bum” Bright Foundation. The endowment provides an enduring source of funds to develop a program of excellence in Cotton Engineering, Ginning, and Mechanization. Dr. Calvin Parnell was selected as the inaugural chair holder and served two consecutive five-year terms. After his retirement in 2016, Dr. Alex Thomasson was appointed chair starting in 2017. Continuing the mission, he has led efforts in teaching and research that address the near-term and longer-term needs of the cotton industry from an engineering standpoint, and particularly a machinery-systems standpoint.
Under Dr. Thomasson, the Cotton Engineering program currently includes 14 graduate students from around the globe in pursuit of their Masters and/or Ph.D. degrees in the Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department. Their areas of research range from sensing, analytics, mechanics, cotton disease detection with UAVs (drones), cotton yield prediction with remote sensing, and robotic harvesting.