Rice Research Review | Fall 2025

Rice Research Review

Rice’s Research and Innovation Ecosystem

LEAD INNOVATIONSINHEALTH BUILD THRIVINGURBANCOMMUNIT

Rice 360 Institute

Biotech Launch Pad Accelerator

Rice-MD Anderson Cancer Center

SynthX Center

Center for Theoretical Biological Physics

Neuroengineering Initiative

Center for Nanoscale Imaging Sciences

Boniuk Institute

Kinder Institute

Voting Operations, Technology, Equity and Security

Moody Center for the Arts

Institute of Health

Resilience and Innovation

SSPEED Center

Synthetic Biology Institute WaTER Institute

Smalley-Curl Institute

Energy Moonshot Accelerator

Rice Sustainability Institute

Digital Health Initiative

Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies

Scientia Institute

Center for Coastal Futures and Adaptive Resilience

Ken Kennedy Institute

Chao Center for Asian Studies

Center for African and African American Studies

Center for Environmental Studies

GENERATESUSTAINABLEFUTURES RESPONSIBLEAI

Rice Space Institute

OpenStax Accelerator

in

Health From Cells to Society

Institute of Health Resilience and Innovation tackles challenges from the inside out

Relentless Genius of James Tour

cancer breakthroughs and nanotech revolutions into real-world impact

a new era in cellular imaging

and art share a nervous system in the Moody Center for the Arts’ fall 2025 exhibition

On the Rhodes Again 48

A Rhodes Scholar heads to Oxford to tackle climate change and global health

Behind the Scenes

The Bridge Builders 51

Inside the Baker Institute’s three-decade mission to turn research into real-world policy

Shooting for the Stars 56

Two recently reappointed deans on the future of engineering, computing and natural sciences

AI by Rice, for Rice 59

Transforming university operations with purpose-built AI models

In the News 60

Rice experts frame the Kerr County floods as a failure of foresight

Sustainable Futures

Nurturing Nature 62

Creating a living shoreline as an innovative natural defense

Beyond Bosons and Fermions 66

Proposing the theoretical existence of “impossible” paraparticles

A Surprising Twist 68

Discovering that carbon nanotube fibers are fully recyclable

Five Years, Far-Reaching Impact 70

The Carbon Hub proves hydrocarbons can do more than burn — they can build

Driving the Future of Clean Energy 72

Leading the charge in indus-

trial decarbonization that’s both scalable and self-sustaining

No Pressure 74

Repurposing dialysis to treat industrial wastewater

Quantum Leap 76

Transforming a homegrown material in search of superconductivity

How It’s Done

Health Happens Here 78

Powerful partnerships with the world’s largest medical center

Slicing Through Red Tape 80

The team working to patent and commercialize Rice’s breakthrough inventions

The Great Doerrs 82

The Doerr Institute is redefining leadership with research-backed programs

Responsible AI

Grand Slam 87

Rice’s Lydia Kavraki on being elected to the nation’s four most prestigious academies

Rethinking Generative AI 88

GenAI can spark creativity at work — but only by thinking with it

Where Code Meets Cure 89

The Digital Health Institute is remaking modern medicine using AI

Breaking Cancer’s Code 92

The SynthX Center is rewriting the rules of cancer treatment

AI Gets the Dirt on Soil 94

Machine learning reveals hidden contaminants with a faster, simpler method

Forecasting the Future 96

Building AI that can see the storm coming — and know exactly what it will break

Art-ificial Intelligence 98

Coding meets canvas in one student’s unexpected foray into art

What’s

Next

Defying Gravity 100

Peggy Whitson’s journey is a living testament to Rice’s role in the space program

Build Less, Build Better 102

An architect makes the case for carbon nanotubes as integrating science and society

Global Ambitions Take Root in India 105

Rice’s Bengaluru campus is gaining ground

A Pathway to Discovery

When I was an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, I was diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, a condition that causes a rapid heart beat due to an extra electrical pathway in the heart. My heart would sometimes suddenly race at over 150 beats per minute. At the time, an experimental procedure was being performed by a cardiac electrophys -

iologist who had a background not only in medicine but also in computer science, electrical engineering and biomedical engineering.

That pioneering procedure worked to help alleviate my condition, and thankfully I have not had a rapid heart beat since. This life-changing experience offered me a powerful, personal example of how innovations in interdisciplinary research can change and improve lives.

At Rice, our faculty and students are conducting this kind of impactful research every day. We are deeply committed to both foundational and translational discovery that leads to real-world solutions. We pursue innovation not for its own sake but

because it has the power to improve health and social outcomes, strengthen communities and create a more sustainable future.

In this issue of R3, you’ll read about these exciting innovations. Houston, the fourth-largest city in the country and a global hub, is an ideal environment for work and research across all disciplines. Its size, diversity, expertise in energy and engineering, a thriving arts community, and a generous philanthropic spirit make it both unique and a catalyst for research and innovation. Accessibility to the Texas Medical Center, located across the street from Rice’s campus, provides a plethora of opportunities for students and faculty to continuously develop and enhance partnerships in the evolving field of health, science, engineering and beyond.

We are also extending our reach internationally — in Paris, India, South America, Italy and beyond — and investing in Houston’s innovation ecosystem through our continued expansion of the Ion, which provides space, programming and networking to bring together Texas startups, venture capital, and academic, corporate and civic stakeholders.

Our students are vital to this momentum. They bring energy, ideas and purpose to every lab and project, and they graduate prepared to lead in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. Fueling our growth and impact is Rice’s collaborative culture, which encourages cross-disciplinary partnerships and brings together experts from across fields to tackle society’s most urgent challenges.

Together, these efforts ensure Rice continues to advance as a powerhouse for bold ideas, creative solutions and worldwide impact.

— REGINALD DESROCHES

PRESIDENT REGINALD DESROCHES

A Deeply Human Endeavor

At Rice, research drives discovery, innovation and impact. It is also a deeply human endeavor, catalyzed by curiosity and collaboration across disciplines.

In this issue of R3, we celebrate the extraordinary breadth of research at Rice and the people who make it possible. Two of our stories highlight the discipline-defying work of Professors Lydia Kavraki and James Tour. Their research demonstrates how multifaceted approaches can lead to extraordinary breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, biomedicine, cancer treatment, defense, robotics, sustainability and pollution remediation.

Rice does not do this work alone. Collaborations with institutions in the Texas Medical Center are vital to advancing health, science, and technology in ways that no single institution could achieve. A map illustrates how Rice’s ENRICH (Educational and Research Initiatives for Collaborative Health) Office works with Texas Medical Center partners to establish lasting and impactful collaborations.

Innovation at Rice is not confined to the lab. Social scientists are uncovering insights into human behavior, motivation and organizational dynamics that influence policy and practice. In these pages, you’ll read more about the Kinder Institute for Public Policy’s Houston Education Research Consortium, which provides data to decision-

makers from eight regional school districts to solve longstanding problems in education equity. Working for better workplaces, psychological scientists Margaret Beier and Rebecca Brossoit’s respective research explores aging and continuous employment and the well-being of employees at work and at home. In business, Jing Zhou, deputy dean of academic affairs and the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Management, studies all aspects of creativity in innovation, entrepreneurship and beyond.

And a recent Moody Center for the Arts exhibition inspired by the Humanities Research Center’s theme of repair reminds us that innovation

is not only technical or economical. It is creative, expressive and deeply human. It is also sustainable. Rice assistant professor Juan Jose Castellón is casting a vision for a sustainable revolution in his discipline of architecture. The key? The lightweight, incredibly strong carbon nanotubes that are typically the domain of science, technology and engineering professors.

As you explore this issue of R3, I hope you’ll see what makes Rice’s research enterprise so distinctive: a culture of innovation rooted in curiosity, collaboration and care. It is a privilege to support this work and the extraordinary people behind it.

— AMY DITTMAR

Contributors

Ben Baker-Katz isn’t from Texas, but he got here as soon as he could. A Rice 2023 grad, he now works for FTI Consulting but couldn’t resist the opportunity to return to campus to write about the Baker Institute. He previously served as editor-in-chief of the Rice Thresher and hopes to one day serve as editor-in-chief of a small mountain town newspaper you’ve never heard of.

Juliana Lightsey is a Rice senior at Sid Richardson College studying political science, social policy and English. She also serves as managing editor of the Rice Thresher.

Hongtao Hu is a Rice junior at Will Rice College studying English and operations research. He writes for the Rice Thresher and the Wild Grain, an English department publication. In his free time, he does gymnastics and plays Magic: The Gathering.

Jenna Perrone is a Rice sophomore at Baker College studying history and political science. She currently serves as the Rice Thresher’s opinion editor and a staff writer for the Rice Journal of Public Policy.

Alice Levitt began writing about technology, with an emphasis on telling stories about medical innovation, while working as a restaurant critic at Houstonia. As a freelance journalist specializing in food and travel, some of her favorite national bylines include Vox, Atlas Obscura, Culture, EatingWell and Simply Recipes. Her career highlight is speaking at a nanomedical conference in Calabria, Italy.

Mike Snyder has been covering the Greater Houston area since 1977. He retired from the Houston Chronicle in 2019 and has since written for Texas Monthly, Houston Landing, Houstonia, the Chronicle and more.

Rice Research Review

Publisher Christopher Johns-Krull, Interim Executive Vice President of Research

Editor Katharine Shilcutt

Creative Director

Alese Pickering

Art Director

Amy Kinkead

Photography + Video

Jeff Fitlow

Brandon Martin

Gustavo Raskosky

Proofreader

Kyndall Krist

Editorial Assistant

Juliana Lightsey

Contributors

Ben Baker-Katz

Alex Becker

Sam Byrd

Silvia Cernea

Clark

Avery Ruxer

Franklin

George Hale

Hongtao Hu

Alice Levitt

Juliana Lightsey

Marcy de Luna

Brandon Martin

Amy McCaig

Scott Pett

Jenna Perrone

Brandi Smith

Mike Snyder

Chris Stipes

© September 2025, Rice University

THE RICE UNIVERSITY BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Robert T. Ladd, chair; Elle Anderson; Bart Broadman; D. Mark Durcan; Josh Earnest; Michol L. Ecklund; George Y. Gonzalez; Jennifer R. Kneale; Patti Lipoma Kraft; Holli Ladhani; Elle Moody; Asuka Nakahara; A. Lanham Napier; William “Bill” V. Neville III; Vinay S. Pai; Byron Pope; Cathryn Rodd Selman; Gloria Meckel Tarpley; Jeremy Thigpen; Claudia Gee Vassar; Charlos C. Ward; James Whitehurst; Lori Rudge Whitten; Randa Duncan Williams; Michael B. Yuen.

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS

Reginald DesRoches, president; Amy Dittmar, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs; Stephen Bayer, vice president for Development and Alumni Relations; Paul Cherukuri, vice president for Innovation; Melinda Spaulding Chevalier, vice president for Public Affairs; Kelly Fox, executive vice president for Operations, Finance and Support; Terrence M. Gee, interim vice president for Information Technology and chief information officer; Kenneth Jett, vice president for Facilities and Capital Construction; Christopher Johns-Krull, interim executive vice president for Research; Caroline Levander, vice president for Global Strategy; Tommy McClelland, vice president and director of Athletics; Yvonne M. Romero, vice president for Enrollment; Omar A. Syed, vice president and general counsel.

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Innovations in Health

Health Innovations

Tony Brown, Kristi English and Christopher Fagundes have an ambitious new mission with the Institute of Health Resilience and Innovation.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF FITLOW

IHRI is taking a “cells-to-society“ approach, connecting microscopic changes in the body with the social realities we face every day.

BOUNCING BACK

From Cells to Society

Rice’s new Institute of Health Resilience and Innovation is mixing science, sociology and a little Houston hustle to tackle health challenges from the inside out — and for the long haul.

BY AMY MCCAIG

Since its inception in 2007, CPRIT has invested over $6 billion across its various programs — second only to the National Cancer Institute in terms of research funding — which makes Texas one of the top 10 public financiers of cancer research in the world.

Welcome to the health resilience revolution: With the launch of Rice’s new Institute of Health Resilience and Innovation, the university is diving headfirst into the lifelong puzzle of what makes some people bounce back from illness — and what holds others back.

This isn’t just about finding answers. It’s about creating real-world solutions. IHRI will combine the brainpower of scientists, psychologists, sociologists and medical experts to explore how biology, environment and lived experience shape

our health from cradle to retirement (and beyond).

“The launch of the Institute of Health Resilience and Innovation exemplifies Rice University’s commitment to leading in health innovations,” said Rice President Reginald DesRoches. “This institute will not only generate groundbreaking discoveries but also translate them into real-world solutions that benefit individuals and communities, both in Houston and beyond.”

So, what exactly is health resilience? Think of it as your body and mind’s ability to roll with the punches — whether it’s disease, trauma or chronic stress. IHRI is taking a “cells-to-society” approach, connecting microscopic changes in the body with the social realities we face every day. It’s not just about genes or germs; it’s about ZIP codes, job stress, neighborhood safety and community resources.

“This institute reflects Rice’s commitment to advancing innovations in health,” said IHRI Director Christopher Fagundes. “Our research will lead to real-world solutions that strengthen resilience at every level: biological, psychological, social and environmental.”

Why Houston? Why now? Because no place is better suited for this kind of work. Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the U.S., with a full spectrum of health challenges and community strengths.

“Houston is a microcosm of the broader health challenges faced na-

tionwide,” said Fagundes. “By studying the city’s diverse populations, we can develop tailored, scalable interventions that promote health at both local and national levels.”

And with Rice right next to the Texas Medical Center — the largest in the world (see “Health Happens Here,” Page 78) — the partnerships are practically built in.

The IHRI isn’t just a think tank — it’s a launchpad. With support for students, early-career researchers and faculty, the institute will fund pilot studies, host workshops and remove roadblocks to large-scale research.

Executive Director Kristi English, the organizational engine behind much of Rice’s health research, is fired up about what’s next.

“By equipping researchers with the necessary resources, we hope to accelerate scientific discoveries and practical interventions that promote health resilience regardless of where a person was born or the circumstances they face,” said English.

English said she’s focused on bringing together researchers, practitioners and community partners to create real, scalable impact alongside Fagundes and deputy director Tony Brown.

The mission is ambitious. The tools are in place. And the energy? Off the charts. With the IHRI, Rice is charting a new path — one where science meets humanity, and where resilience isn’t just a concept, but a goal everyone can reach.

EMPIRE BUILDER

The Relentless Genius of James Tour

From cancer breakthroughs to nanotech revolutions, James Tour’s lab at Rice University is reshaping science — and racing to turn discovery into real-world impact.

BY KATHARINE SHILCUTT

At Rice, the word “laboratory” barely captures the scale of James Tour’s empire of innovation. It’s more like an idea factory — one that is once again grabbing headlines for a potentially life-saving breakthrough: a new weapon against pancreatic cancer.

In early 2025, Tour’s lab unveiled a pioneering advance in cancer treatment. Using a method called molecular radiosensitization, they created formulations that dramatically enhance radiation’s ability to destroy pancreatic tumors — one of the most lethal and treatment-resistant cancers known. The tumors shrank significantly without harming healthy tissue. Tour called the results “astounding,” offering a glimmer of hope for a disease where five-year survival rates remain dismal.

Yet for Tour, who is among the world’s most cited chemists, this kind of breakthrough is just one entry on an extraordinary — and

ever-growing — list.

“We try not to stay in one lane,” Tour said. “If we see a problem that can be solved with chemistry or materials science, we go after it.”

That philosophy has led his lab into an astonishing array of fields. Environmental technology, for example, has seen some of Tour’s boldest moves. His team developed a low-energy, scalable method for dismantling per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS — the “forever chemicals” that threaten drinking water worldwide. Tour described it as “transformative,” a potential game changer for public health and the environment.

Tour’s approach is often about turning trash into treasure. In 2022, his lab revealed a method to treat plastic waste so it could capture carbon dioxide from the air — a major tool against climate change. That built on his earlier 2020 invention: flash graphene, a technique that converts waste such as food scraps,

plastic and rubber into valuable graphene in milliseconds. Flash graphene could revolutionize industries from construction to electronics while sharply reducing carbon footprints.

Unlike many labs, however, Tour doesn’t just publish and move on. He actively pushes his discoveries toward commercialization: More than a dozen startups and partnerships have spun out from his research. These ventures tackle everything from sustainable materials to medical therapeutics, ensuring Tour’s ideas don’t just stay in journals — they hit the real world, fast.

“We want to create technologies that help people now, not 30 years from now,” he said.

That urgency is clear in how quickly Tour’s ideas move from concept to company.

EXPANDING THE FRONTIERS OF NANOTECHNOLOGY

Tour’s latest nanotechnology breakthrough, announced in 2024, showcases “molecular jackhammers” — tiny, rapidly vibrating carbon structures that can bore into cell membranes and kill unwanted cancer cells or superbacteria with unprecedented precision. This nanotech opens a new modality of therapy against diseases while minimizing damage to healthy tissue. It’s exactly the kind of disruptive advance that has become a Tour hallmark: ambitious, imaginative

Health Innovations

Inside the Tour Lab

A Snapshot of Breakthroughs

Cancer Therapy Revolution: Nanoparticles that supercharge radiation to shrink pancreatic tumors safely.

PFAS Cleanup: Electrochemical methods to destroy “forever chemicals” contaminating water supplies.

Turning Trash Into Treasure: Flash graphene converts food waste, plastics and rubber into a supermaterial in milliseconds.

Plastic Waste to Climate Solution: Treated plastics that pull carbon dioxide from the air, fighting climate change.

Molecular Jackhammers: New carbon technology designed to pound their way into cells for precise killing of unwanted diseases.

Commercialization Engine: More than a dozen companies and partnerships spun out to bring lab breakthroughs to market fast.

and aimed squarely at real-world impact.

“Jim combines a deep understanding of carbon chemistry with a focus on technology transfer, and this has been a winning formula for him,” said Thomas Killian, dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences and professor of physics and astronomy. “He truly embodies the mission of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences to advance fundamental understanding of the natural world and improve the human condition through pioneering research.”

It’s easy to be dazzled by the range of fields Tour touches: cancer therapy, chemical cleanup, sustainable manufacturing, advanced nanotechnologies like computer memories and ultrastrong materials. But what’s equally striking is the speed. Where many labs choose a narrow focus, Tour’s group sprints across disciplines with breathtaking agility.

THE ENGINE BEHIND THE BREAKTHROUGHS

The driving force is relentless culture of invention and a refusal to fear failure. Tour credits his team of graduate students, postdocs and collaborators for sharing his drive.

“You have to be willing to learn new areas quickly,” he said. “It’s about curiosity, and it’s about not being afraid to fail.”

That ethos has made the Tour Lab a magnet for ambitious young scientists and a powerhouse of research output.

Take, for example, the invention of a new method of creating graphene — a two-dimensional carbon lattice

that can boost the performance and efficiency of solar cells, computer chips and myriad other electronics. Graphene is stronger than steel, lighter than aluminum and a fantastic conductor of both heat and electricity, but it’s also time-consuming to make and can require an expensive clean-room environment. In Tour’s lab, mechanical engineer Jian Lin — a postdoctoral researcher at the time — stumbled across a way to create laser-induced graphene that was far more practical and cost-effective.

One night in 2014, Lin was testing whether an infrared-light-emitting laser could transform graphene oxide into sheets of graphene. The laser missed, but instead of burning the target, it seared the polymer behind the material. Lin, taught to follow his instincts for curiosity, examined the results using a Raman Spectrometer and found bunched-up layers of graphene. This discovery suggested graphene could be created using any blank-slate material containing carbon — a realization that has since made creating high-quality graphene easier than ever before.

“Dr. Tour is very inspiring and gave me full freedom and confidence to explore the unknown,” said Lin, now an associate professor and the William R. Kimel Faculty Fellow in Engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia. “He is also very supportive and open-minded.”

Tour has published more than 800 scientific papers and holds more than 150 patents. He is also one of the most cited chemists globally — an acknowledgment not just of the volume but the influence of his work.

“We want to create technologies that help people now, not 30 years from now,” —James Tour

“His creation of the terminology of ‘laser-induced graphene’ was amazing and has been widely cited in the field since then,” Lin noted.

While many breakthroughs emerge in silos, Tour’s influence spans industries: health care, energy, manufacturing, environmental remediation. His flash graphene method could someday make cities greener and cheaper to build. His PFAS destruction process could help communities finally win battles against toxic groundwater. His cancer nanotechnologies could extend and improve lives.

“At Rice, we believe transformative science happens when researchers are empowered to take risks across disciplines,” said Christopher Johns-Krull, interim vice president for research and professor of physics and astronomy. “Jim exemplifies that spirit. His lab is proof that when you foster creativity, collaboration and bold thinking, the results can change the world.”

The Tour Lab represents a new model for 21st-century science: fast, entrepreneurial and deeply interdisciplinary research aimed at making the world a better place.

“We don’t set small goals,” Tour said. “We go after the problems that matter.”

With a portfolio already reshaping cancer treatment, environmental cleanup and nanomedicine — and with a commercialization pipeline that brings those ideas to market — Tour’s impact is hard to overstate, as he changes the world one audacious breakthrough at a time.

And if past is prologue, he’s only getting started.

A Decade of Discoveries to Dollars

Tour has started 17 companies in the past decade — three of which are public — with a cumulative value of more than $1.5 billion. They include:

Dotz (public): Graphene quantum dots and CO₂ capture

Weebit (public): Silicon oxide computer memory

Zeta Energy: Low-carbonfootprint lithiumsulfur batteries

Neurocords: Graphene nanoribbons for spinal cord repair

Xerient: Pancreatic cancer treatment in Phase II clinical trials

Pleozyme: Treatment of Down syndrome, traumatic brain injury, stroke and dementia

Rust Patrol: Corrosion inhibition

Roswell Biotechnologies:

DNA sequencing and analysis on a molecular electronic chip

Universal Matter: Flash graphene and other 2D materials

Flash Metals

USA Inc. (public):

Flash-heating for rare earth elements from coal fly ash and metals by urban mining of electronic waste, plus flash-heating for lithium-ion battery recycling

United Standard

Materials Corp.:

Flash-heating waste plastic for 1D materials and hydrogen gas, plus 1D silicon carbide from waste

Flash

Hydrogen LLC: Silicon carbide preparation, graphite and battery recycling

Pattern

Materials:

Laser-induced graphene

IronLattice:

Neuromorphic

AI computing device based on a superlattice structure, compute-inmemory

URI Biotech LLC: Molecular machines in cardiovascular care

Hagana Inc.:

MXenes (2D inorganic compounds), flash-within-flash Joule heating

Terrajoule Inc.:

Flash-heating soil for removal of PFAS, heavy metals and organics; flash-heating PFAS-containing activated carbon or resins

Health Innovations

IN A NEW LIGHT

Illuminating the Invisible

With the development of soTILT3D, Rice scientists pioneer a new era in cellular imaging, enhancing our understanding of health and disease.

BY ALEX BECKER

In the intricate dance of life at the cellular level, seeing is understanding. Yet, for years, scientists have been peering through a foggy window, limited by the constraints of traditional microscopy. Now, a team from Rice, led by assistant professor of chemistry Anna-Karin Gustavsson, has cleared the view with an innovative imaging platform named soTILT3D — a breakthrough that promises to revolutionize our grasp of cellular

structures and their complex interactions.

The challenge researchers faced with conventional fluorescence microscopy was that it couldn’t resolve features smaller than a few hundred nanometers due to light diffraction. While single-molecule super-resolution microscopy offered sharper images, thicker samples were plagued by background noise and sluggish imaging speeds.

Enter soTILT3D, which

At the heart of soTILT3D is its tilted light sheet, a thin plane of light that selectively illuminates slices of a sample.

It’s as if scientists have been given a new set of eyes, allowing them to witness the intricate ballet of life at a level of detail previously unimaginable.

stands for single-objective tilted light sheet with 3D point spread functions. This platform combines an angled light sheet, a nanoprinted microfluidic system and advanced computational tools to enhance imaging precision and speed, providing a clearer, faster and more detailed visualization of cellular structures, even in the most challenging samples.

At the heart of soTILT3D is its tilted light sheet, a thin plane of light that selectively illuminates slices of a sample. This approach reduces background fluorescence from outof-focus areas, much like turning

Anna-Karin Gustavsson

down the ambient noise to hear a conversation better.

“The light sheet is formed using the same objective lens as used in the microscope for imaging, and it is fully steerable, dithered to remove shadowing artifacts that are common in light sheet microscopy and angled to enable imaging all the way down to the coverslip,” said Gustavsson, who launched Rice’s Center for Nanoscale Imaging Sciences in 2024 and currently serves as its founding director.

What this means, she said, is that researchers can now explore entire samples from top to bottom with

unprecedented clarity. But the innovation doesn’t stop there.

The platform incorporates a custom-designed microfluidic system equipped with a nanoprinted, customizable metalized micromirror. This setup allows precise control over the samples environment and rapid solution exchanges, facilitating sequential multitarget imaging without color offsets. In simpler terms, scientists can now observe multiple cellular components in quick succession without the usual technical hiccups.

Graduate student and co-first author Nahima Saliba highlighted the system’s adaptability: “The design and geometry of the microfluidic chip and nanoprinted insert with the micromirror can be easily adapted for various samples and length scales, providing versatility in different experimental setups.” This flexibility means that soTILT3D can be tailored to a wide range of research needs, making it a valuable tool across various fields of biological study.

Moreover, soTILT3D leverages deep learning and real-time drift correction algorithms to enhance imaging speed and stability. This means researchers can capture high-precision images over extended periods, opening new avenues for observing dynamic processes within cells.

By offering a more detailed and dynamic view into the cellular world, soTILT3D holds the potential to deepen our understanding of the fundamental processes that drive health and disease. It’s as if scientists have been given a new set of eyes, allowing them to witness the delicate ballet of life at a level of detail previously unimaginable.

Health Innovations

KICKER TK

Biology as Medium

At the Moody Center for the Arts, biology and art share a nervous system in its fall 2025 exhibition: “Bio Morphe.”

BY KATHARINE SHILCUTT

The sculptures breathe. The paintings undulate. The walls, in parts, are blooming with moss.

Step into “Bio Morphe” — the Moody Center for the Arts’ fall 2025 exhibition — and the line between nature and art begins to ripple. On view Sept. 5 through Dec. 20, the group show gathers seven international artists whose work draws from the language of biology: soft forms, cellular structures, synthetic skins. But beyond the visual spectacle, “Bio Morphe” unspools deeper questions about embodiment, illness, identity and our increasingly tangled relationship with science and technology.

“The artists in this exhibition are not simply mimicking organic forms,” said Frauke Josenhans, curator of this fall’s show. “They’re responding to scientific research, working with new materials, even translating lab techniques into art-making. It’s about how we understand our bodies in an age when biology and technology are increasingly entangled.”

The exhibition’s title nods to the term biomorphism, coined in the early 20th century to describe artworks inspired by natural shapes and structures. But while early modernists like Jean Arp or Barbara Hepworth once softened abstraction with biomorphic curves, today’s art ists are asking: What happens when nature itself is engineered?

“At the Moody our mission is to connect disparate disciplines through the arts, and in so doing illuminate critical questions shared by artists, scholars and scientists,” said Alison Weaver, the Suzanne Deal Booth Executive Director of the Moody Center for the Arts. “‘Bio Morphe’ is an exciting exploration of fields ranging from biology and bioengineering to cognitive neuro science, and we’re eager to invite our guests to be a part of these ever-evolving conversations.”

Art That Touches a Nerve

In “Bio Morphe,” Josenhans uses biomorphism as a conceptual launch pad to highlight new generations of artists that build on earlier engage ments with biomorphism — but look at it from a contemporary point of view. “It’s a term with deep roots,” she said, “but this show is about how artists are thinking through biology now, with all the scientific and ethical complexity that entails.”

alive. Though monumental in scale, her soft exudates seem vulnerable, even tender.

Anchoring the show are two site-specific installations created for the Moody by Eva Fàbregas and Sui Park. Fàbregas, a Barcelona-based sculptor, produces latex forms that resemble overgrown internal organs: fleshy, deflated, ambiguously

“She makes these shapes that feel both alien and intimately human,” said Josenhans.

Park, in contrast, works with industrial zip ties — thousands of them — woven into biomorphic forms that suggest cellular colonies, fungal blooms or strange marine creatures. Her Microcosm series will occupy

Health Innovations

the central gallery, media gallery and parts of the building’s exterior, crawling up walls or nesting under eaves.

“These forms are static, but they feel like they’re moving, pulsing,” said Josenhans. “There’s something whimsical and otherworldly about them, but also incredibly precise.”

Park’s installation is deliberately porous, spilling out of the Moody and onto the campus just as Rice’s new Sarofim Hall — which will house the university’s Department of Art — opens next door. “With so many students passing by, I love that they’ll see these strange, beautiful forms and be drawn in, even if they didn’t plan to visit the Moody that day,” Josenhans said.

Bodies in Question

If the show has a nervous system, it runs through the work of Berenice Olmedo. The Mexico City-based sculptor creates uncanny human forms from prosthetics and orthotics — tools of healing recast as aesthetic materials. Her sculptures challenge the idea of bodily wholeness, instead embracing variation, imperfection and interdependence.

“She works with discarded medical equipment, asking us to rethink what a ‘healthy’ body even is,” Josenhans said. “Who defines that? And who gets left out of that definition?”

Olmedo’s inclusion has also spurred a partnership between the Moody and Rice’s Medical Humanities Research Institute. In November, Olmedo will appear in a public conversation with MHRI director Kirsten Ostherr and associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine Dr. Ricardo Nuila, exploring the

Left: Louise Bourgeois, “The Couple, 2003”; Above: Christina Quarles “(Stretch Lil’ Cat) Try N’ Wake Up,” 2024; Below: Lucy Kim “White Vanilla (Gene Edited Albino Vanilla Plantlet – 22 Part Composition),” 2024

Health Innovations

intersections of care, disability and the aesthetics of medicine.

“Art and medicine both engage with the human body,” Josenhans said. “Bringing them into conversation feels urgent.”

The Biological Image

In “Bio Morphe,” biology isn’t just a metaphor — it’s a medium. Lucy Kim, an artist and professor at Boston University, uses melanin-producing bacteria as a printmaking material. In fall 2024, Kim was the Moody’s artist-in-residence and deeply engaged with the scientific community during her time at Rice. Working in collaboration with scientific labs, she cultivates the bacteria, then screenprints with it to create images that are materially alive.

“I started by trying to make oil paints using the body’s own pigments: melanin,” Kim said. “That led me to working with bacteria, which turned out to be far more interesting than I expected. The bacteria grow, they die, they change the image. There’s a visible biological presence in the work.”

Two of Kim’s melanin prints will be featured in the show, alongside a large oil painting based on a cast of a beach at low tide, a surface pattern that mimics natural rhythms. “Ultimately, all of my work is about how we see things,” she said. “It’s not really about biology itself — it’s about the limits of perception.”

Josenhans considers her central to the curatorial thesis. “Lucy is literally working with biological systems,” Josenhans said. “Her process, her material, her conceptual frame — they all challenge how

we process information through the body and brain.”

For Kim, being included in “Bio Morphe” is as meaningful personally as it is professionally. “I’m really excited about the show,” she said. “It brings together such different generations and approaches. Tishan Hsu is one of my art heroes. It’s surreal to be in a show with him.”

Seeing Through the Skin

The idea of bodies in flux — changing, dissolving, reforming — echoes in the paintings of Christina Quarles. Her figures bend and blur, caught between states of being. Gender, race, identity and desire collapse into muscular linework and pools of pastel pigment. Positioned near Fàbregas’s

latex forms and Park’s cellular sculptures, Quarles’ work becomes yet another argument for fluidity.

“She dismantles assumptions about the human figure,” Josenhans said. “And she does it with this incredible visual energy.”

Adding another sensory register is the inclusion of Tishan Hsu, whose sculptural reliefs and digital paintings imagine the body fused with technology. His work, created over four decades, feels prescient, capturing a world where the boundary between skin and screen is breaking down.

“He’s been thinking about these issues since the 1980s,” said Josenhans. “His work illustrates a continuity, reminding us that many questions we ask today are not new,

Berenice Olmedo “Aithér,” 2023

but they are becoming more urgent now.”

That historical thread culminates in “The Couple,” a late sculpture by Louise Bourgeois. Cast in aluminum, the entwined figures float midair, simultaneously ethereal and weighty. “Her work feels timeless,” Josenhans said. “And it connects the exhibition back to earlier forms of biomorphism, to the avant-garde and beyond.”

Designing a Living System

Even the graphic design of “Bio Morphe” reflects its theme. The exhibition’s title wall will be partially covered in real moss, with letters that mimic the movement of water. Exhibition labels and graphics, designed by Omnivore, incorporate fluid, cellular shapes. “I wanted the design to feel organic — like the exhibition is alive,” Josenhans said.

The layout itself was developed in collaboration with the Moody exhibition team led by Lee Clark and Nicole Yip, a former Rice architecture student who now assists with exhibition design. “She knows the space intimately,” Josenhans said. “It’s been invaluable to work with someone who speaks that visual language fluently.”

That spirit of collaboration suffuses the entire show. “Artists aren’t working in a vacuum,” Josenhans said. “They’re in conversation — with scientists, with history, with each other and with all of us.”

“Bio Morphe” may be about biology, but it’s also about imagination: about how artists help us see what’s beneath the surface — of our bodies, our technologies, our time.

In conjunction with “Bio Morphe,” the Moody Center will host a slate of public programs exploring the exhibition’s central themes, from interdisciplinary artist panels and dance performances to music premieres and conversations at the intersection of art and medicine. All programs are free and open to the public. Highlights include:

OPENING RECEPTION

Friday, Sept. 5, 6–8 p.m.

Celebrate the launch of “Bio Morphe” with the artists and curator.

ARTIST PANEL

Saturday, Sept. 6, 2–3:30 p.m.

Eva Fàbregas, Lucy Kim and Sui Park discuss biomorphism, materials and scientific collaboration. Moderated by Frauke Josenhans.

DANCE PERFORMANCE: DIMENSIONS VARIABLE

Friday, Oct. 9, 6–8 p.m.

New York-based choreographer Gabrielle Lamb and her company, Pigeonwing Dance, present a site-specific performance in response to the exhibition.

NEW ART / NEW MUSIC: BIO MORPHE

Saturday, Nov. 1, 3–5 p.m.

Rice music students debut original compositions inspired by the artworks. Reception to follow.

ARTISTS-IN-DIALOGUE: BERENICE OLMEDO + MEDICAL HUMANITIES

Wednesday, Nov. 12, 6–7:30 p.m.

Join the Moody for a multivoice conversation with Kirsten Ostherr, Dr. Ricardo Nuila and exhibiting artist Berenice Olmedo. Organized in partnership with Rice’s Medical Humanities Program, this interdisciplinary conversation will explore the crossover between art disciplines and the field of medicine, touching on innovations in both areas of study.

Health Innovations

QUALITY OF CARE

Go With the Flo

A student team’s groundbreaking medical device flushes out the competition.

BY SILVIA CERNEA CLARK

In the bustling basement of Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, a group of six bioengineering undergraduates embarked on a journey that would not only redefine postoperative urological care but also earn them national acclaim. The team of undergraduates — Anushka Agrawal, Sahana Prasanna, Robert Heeter, Archit Chabbi, Kevin Li and Richard Chan, all class of 2024 — developed an automated continuous bladder irrigation (CBI) system poised to revolutionize patient outcomes. Their innovation, which they called UroFlo, didn’t go unnoticed. In September 2024, UroFlo clinched the top prize at the Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams Challenge, a prestigious competition organized by the National Institutes of Health and VentureWell. Competing against 85 teams from 48 universities, the Rice contingent stood out, securing a $20,000 award for their groundbreaking device.

CBI is a critical postoperative procedure aimed at preventing blood

“It’s truly rewarding to know that our work can impact patient’s experience and help improve quality of care.” — Archit Chabbi

Inside the UroFlo Device

clots and managing urinary tract infections. Traditional methods, however, are labor-intensive and demand constant vigilance from health care professionals. UroFlo addresses these challenges head-on by integrating advanced sensors and machine learning algorithms, enabling real-time monitoring and autonomous adjustment of irrigation flow rates in response to bleeding. Its intuitive touchscreen interface offers medical staff seamless data visualization and control, thereby reducing workload and enhancing patient care.

The project’s success was bolstered by collaborations with esteemed medical professionals. Dr. Chester Koh, a pediatric urologist affiliated with Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine and Rice, emphasized the significance of engineering solutions like UroFlo in clinical settings.

“Engineering solutions like UroFlo help address unmet needs our pediatric specialists encounter in their day-to-day work with young patients,” said Koh, who also serves as executive director of the FDA-supported Southwest-Midwest National Pediatric Device Innovation Consortium. “Our consortium has an established history of partnering with engineering teams at Rice on such projects, and this team’s success is a testament to just how critical such collaborations can be in improving patient care.”

Dr. Sagar Patel and Dr. Raymond Yong, also from TCH and BCM, served as team sponsors. They

lauded UroFlo’s potential to streamline CBI protocols and much more: “We hoped to revolutionize standard protocols for hematuria by integrating artificial intelligence to reduce health care costs, decrease waste and, ultimately, improve patient outcomes,” Patel said.

The DEBUT Challenge victory not only highlights the ingenuity of Rice’s bioengineering students but also underscores the university’s commitment to fostering innovation that addresses real-world health care challenges. As UroFlo moves closer to clinical application, it stands as a testament to the power of interdisciplinary collaboration and the boundless potential of student-driven innovation.

“We have learned so much from this process, and we are really proud of what we have accomplished,” said Chabbi, who now works as a bioinformatics engineer. “It’s truly rewarding to know that our work can impact patients’ experience and help improve quality of care.”

Blood monitoring

Tracks blood concentration in urine

Flow management

Measures and regulates inflow/ outflow rates with over 95% accuracy, adjusting automatically if needed

Alerts

Built-in lights, alarms and text notifications keep care teams informed

Easy controls

Touchscreen interface designed for both patients and provider

Smart automation

Auto-adjusts irrigation rate based on real-time blood data

Scan this QR code to watch a video about UroFlo

Current standard

Five patient checkups per hour; 7 minutes per hour UroFlo

One patient checkup per hour; 1 minute per hour

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Hands-On Healing

Armed with empathy, ingenuity and a handful of smartphone motors, Rice undergrads are reimagining Parkinson’s therapy — one fingertip at a time.

BY ALEX BECKER

In a corner of Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, a quiet revolution is buzzing — literally. Engineering students Emmie Casey and Tomi Kuye have developed a vibrotactile glove designed to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

Inspired by research from Stanford’s Peter Tass Lab, which demonstrated that randomized fingertip vibrations can help rewire misfiring neurons, the duo aimed to create an affordable, accessible version of this therapeutic device.

“We wanted to take this breakthrough and make it accessible to people who would never be able to afford an expensive medical device,” Casey said. Their prototype utilizes the same tiny vibration motors found in smartphones, embedded into each fingertip of a soft, wireless glove. A custom-designed printed circuit board located at the wrist drives these motors, delivering therapeutic vibrations intended to resynchronize the neurons within the brain that cause tremors and stiffness.

“This glove is designed to stimulate the Pacinian corpuscles within the fingertips to help resynchro -

nize the neurons within the brain that cause tremors and stiffness,” Kuye said. “We’re not just masking symptoms. We’re aiming to actually retrain this part of the brain.”

Beyond engineering, Casey and Kuye are committed to accessibility. They have published open-source instructions online for anyone who wants to build their own glove at home. Recognizing that many interested individuals lack the technical expertise to assemble the device themselves, they have formed a nonprofit and are using a sliding scale price model to ensure cost is never a barrier. They are also taking preorders on their website and accepting donations to help bolster their efforts.

“This project exemplifies what we strive for at the OEDK — empowering students to translate cutting-edge research into real-world solutions,” said Maria Oden, teaching professor of bioengineering, director of the OEDK and co-director of the Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies. “Emmie and Tomi have shown extraordinary initiative and empathy in developing a device that could bring meaningful relief to people living with Parkinson’s, no matter their resources.”

As they work to secure Institutional Review Board approval to evaluate the usability of the device, Casey and Kuye hope to collaborate with partners in the Texas Medical Center to assess the glove’s effectiveness with patients. Their journey from a classroom project to a potentially life-changing innovation underscores the power of student-led initiatives in addressing global health challenges.

Tomi Kuye and Emmie Casey

Innovation

Tiny Implant, Tremendous Promise

With a device no bigger than a pinhead, Rice researchers are turning the immune system into a precision weapon against deadly tumors — offering new hope for some of the hardest-to-treat cancers.

BY SILVIA CERNEA CLARK

Imagine a tiny implant, no larger than a pinhead, capable of rallying the body’s immune system to combat some of the most stubborn cancers — melanoma, pancreatic and colorectal tumors. This isn’t science fiction; it’s the groundbreaking work of researchers at Rice University’s Biotech Launch Pad. They’ve developed what they call an “IL-12 cytokine factory,” a minuscule device implanted near a tumor that releases interleukin-12 (IL-12), a protein known for activating immune responses. By delivering IL-12

directly to the tumor’s neighborhood, this implant summons a specialized group of T cells — think of them as the body’s elite cancer-fighting soldiers. These T cells don’t just attack the local tumor; they also patrol the body, targeting distant cancer sites. The results? In preclinical models, combining this cytokine factory with existing immunotherapies led to the elimination of both primary and metastatic tumors. And the best part? The treatment showed a strong safety profile in both animal studies and non -

“We designed the IL-12 cytokine factory to enhance immunotherapy approaches while minimizing toxicity...” — Omid Veiseh

human primate models.

“We designed the IL-12 cytokine factory to enhance immunotherapy approaches while minimizing toxicity, a critical need in the treatment of particularly aggressive cancers,” said Omid Veiseh, the bioengineering professor spearheading this project.

This innovation is more than just a promising laboratory finding. The team is gearing up to file an investigational new drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by early 2026. More -

over, plans are underway to launch a biotech company centered on this technology, aiming to bring this novel treatment from the lab bench to patients who need it most.

In a world where cancer treatments often come with debilitating side effects, the prospect of a targeted, localized therapy that effectively combats tumors while sparing the rest of the body is nothing short of revolutionary. Thanks to the ingenuity of the Rice team, we’re one step closer to turning that vision into reality.

The IL-12 cytokine factory is implanted near a tumor and delivers interleukin-12 directly to the area, summoning a specialized group of T-cells to attack the cancer and patrol the body.

Third Eye on the Future

A Rice-born startup is making AI faster, cheaper and smarter — and the rest of the world is taking notice.

BY ALICE LEVITT

“We live in an era where you can get a Nobel Prize in four years,” said Anshumali Shrivastava.

A professor of computer science, electrical and computer engineering, and statistics at Rice, Shrivastava is also a co-founder of ThirdAI with former Rice Ph.D. student Tharun Medini. “He’s the smartest kid you’ll find,” Shrivastava said.

A future Nobel laureate? Chances look good if the four-year success of the AlphaFold artificial intelligence model is anything to go by. ThirdAI (pronounced “Third Eye,” referencing perception beyond ordinary sight) is moving with similar speed. Formed in 2021, Shrivastava said, “There was no generative AI, there was no ChatGPT” at the time of its inception.

“We knew that an age is going to come where people will need very large neural networks, very large models with a lot of data,” he recalled. “We knew it was coming

FIGURE OF MERIT

Anshumali Shrivastava

“All you need is yourself and a computer, and you can literally change the world.”— Anshumali Shrivastava

in some form or the other … so we started building an infrastructure where we were looking at the science and technology of how we can create AI that is 100 or 1,000 times more efficient than what it was [at the time].”

What the pair built was uniquely efficient AI that makes large-scale modeling practical. Most AI relies on graphics processing units for power. ThirdAI focuses on using central processing units — what most home computers run on. For countries that can’t afford GPUs, this is critical. Is this already going over your head? Shrivastava forgives you. “Everybody only has a shallow expertise because it is so new. So we are learning,” he said. “A lot of people call themselves an expert in LLMs, but how can you be an expert when a field started two years back?”

LLMs — large language models — have been the talk of the tech world. This spring, ThirdAI got major attention on Hacker News after releasing a method for lossless compression of LLMs. “When running LLMs efficiently, everybody has to make a compromise, which typically comes in terms of accuracy,” Shrivastava explained. “And right now, people are really worried because they spend a fortune to get their accuracies high, and people are like, ‘Maybe the technology is not there.’” But his team’s breakthrough proves that not only is the tech there, but it can also reduce costs by as much as 50%.

Even before that leap, ThirdAI had made major strides at Rice. Tam Dao, associate vice president of

campus safety and research security, works to protect Rice research from foreign espionage. Working with Dao, ThirdAI created Preventive RISk Monitoring (PRISM), a program that cut down assessments from 6 to 8 hours to 2 minutes.

“His team and our team meet every Monday, and they essentially just replicate what I would do manually into an automated process that’s quicker, much more reliable and much more valid than I would be able to do by myself,” Dao said.

This shift frees up his team to focus on prevention rather than intervention, making for a safer campus. And by all accounts, the ThirdAI team is also a pleasure to work with.

“I’ll tell you, honestly, I don’t understand 1% of what they really do,” Dao admitted. “You know how sometimes you can work with really smart people, but they just can’t connect to you? … These guys are on different levels in terms of intelligence, but they also have the social skills to work with me. … It’s been an incredible pleasure.”

At a time when the world is still grappling with the place of AI in our lives, ThirdAI is already putting it to work. Shrivastava said that many business owners still struggle to understand what AI is actually good for.

“But you know what the bigger problem is?” he asked. “We don’t even know what to do with AI. … Then you figure out, OK, if 70%–80% of the world is there, should I wait for the world to come to a conclusion … or should we go and solve who has a problem?”

Learning how to match products

to real needs has made Shrivastava’s research more effective. “It’s very easy, as a researcher, to live in a bubble that you think is the world’s problem — to just take a hypothesis and validate it with some numbers, and then you think that’s the real world,” he said.

But the real world is paying attention. In regions where GPUs are cost-prohibitive — like parts of Eastern Europe, India and a large African nation — ThirdAI’s model is generating interest.

India is especially personal for Shrivastava and Medini, who both hail from there. The company’s name borrows from Eastern philosophy, and its 16-person team maintains a small office in Bengaluru, where the Rice Global India campus opened in 2024 (see Page 105, “Global Ambitions Take Root in India”).

“There is a very nice ecosystem of engineers there, and they are very hard-working. … We understand that ecosystem. We know where to get some of the smartest folks,” said Shrivastava, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology.

He also credits Houston with helping to shape ThirdAI. Most of his business partnerships are abroad or in Silicon Valley, but when it comes to hiring, he said the “vibe” of Houston attracts talent, including several Rice grads beyond Medini.

By the time you read this, it may already be time to update ThirdAI’s story. And that’s what keeps Shrivastava showing up each day.

“All you need is yourself and a computer, and you can literally change the world,” he said.

Adrian Trömel

“Our goal is to enable the incredible research and talent at Rice to reach the market.” —Adrian Trömel

ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

Building Innovation From the Ground Up

Four questions for Adrian Trömel

BY KATHARINE SHILCUTT

As associate vice president for strategy and investments at Rice’s Office of Innovation, Adrian Trömel brings a rare fusion of engineering precision, entrepreneurial experience and global perspective to his role. Raised in Luxembourg and educated across Europe, Trömel moved to Houston in 2016 with the goal of learning how to commercialize breakthrough technologies and received his MBA from Rice’s Jones Business School in 2018.

Today, he’s helping to lead Rice’s transformation into a hub of innovation, supporting researchers, students and startups as they turn cutting-edge ideas into global solutions. Or, as he succinctly puts it, “I help people start companies.”

How did you end up at Rice?

“I was always the enabler,” Trömel said. “Whether it was building sail-powered cars with friends or helping

JEFF FITLOW

them study, I was the one making ideas happen.” That instinct drove him to study materials science — a discipline he calls a “language school” for engineers — before pursuing entrepreneurship. He arrived in Houston to pursue his MBA at Rice’s Jones Business School, drawn by its reputation in natural sciences and engineering, connection to the Texas Medical Center and its entrepreneurial ecosystem. After helping launch several startups, including a neurostimulation startup and a telemedicine-enabled primary care company, Trömel reconnected with Rice’s Vice President for Innovation Paul Cherukuri, who brought him onboard to help build Rice’s Office of Innovation from scratch.

What does your work with the Office of Innovation entail?

“Our goal is to enable the incredible research and talent at Rice to reach the market,” Trömel said. He’s

helped shape the office around three pillars: talent, facilities and money. One flagship initiative he launched is One Small Step, which provides funding to help researchers generate the final piece of “fundable” data needed to launch a startup. He was also foundational in the development of key community infrastructure, like the Rice Nexus, a physical space where startups, researchers and investors converge weekly. “We’re not just offering programs — we’re building a thriving ecosystem,” he said.

How do you collaborate with other innovation hubs on campus?

Trömel sees the Office of Innovation as part of a larger continuum of support across Rice. “The Office of Technology Transfer handles licensing and patents. The Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Rice Alliance are where students

and faculty learn about entrepreneurship,” he said. His office steps in to help with market validation, industry connections and startup formation. The partnerships span from innovation fellowships with Lilie to co-developing initiatives such as RBL LLC and the Woodside-Rice Decarbonization Accelerator to accelerate technology validation and the formation of startups.

What excites you most about Rice’s global reach?

As a self-described third-culture kid with roots across Europe, the U.S. and Asia, Trömel feels personally aligned with Rice’s new strategic plan tagline: personalized scale for global impact. “To maximize the impact of our research and talent, we need to bring it to market globally,” he said. “That’s what excites me — being part of a university that’s ready to lead on the world stage.”

UP AND RUNNING

Pain Point

A Rice alum turns injury into innovation BY

BRANDON MARTIN

Tyler Strothman ’25, a former track and field athlete

HEEL

Strothman incorporated a 10millimeter heel drop to address Achilles tendon and calf tightness by reducing the tension on the muscles and tendons.

tunities, Strothman built the company from the ground up starting in his garage.

TOE BOX

Strothman frequent ly experienced foot pain from narrow toe boxes while running, but shoes with wider toe boxes had a lower heel drop that pulled on his Achilles tendon.

SOLE

The Ascent, Veloci’s initial model, weighs 9.5 ounces (269 grams). Its sole is made from a mixture of ethylene-vinyl acetate foam, a blend of plastic and rubber properties with lightweight, flexible and shock-absorbing characteristics, and olefin block copolymers, a thermoplastic elastomer known for its elasticity and toughness.

Scan this QR code for an interview with Tyler Strothman on how Rice’s sport management program helped him launch Veloci.

Thriving Urban Communities

Thriving Urban Communities

URBAN LEGEND

At the Crossroads

Rice’s Kinder Institute marks 15 years of turning research into results, helping Houston confront the realities of diversity, disaster and demographic change.

BY MIKE SNYDER

In spring 2010, Houston was gripped by an uncharacteristic sense of gloom.

Just 20% of residents responding to the 29th Houston Area Survey, released on April 20 that year, said their financial circumstances had improved in the past few years — half the level of 2008. Meanwhile, 48% said they expected their finances to get better in the upcoming years, a decline of 10 percentage points from 2008.

Both numbers were the lowest recorded since the survey began in 1982. And at this moment — the nadir of public confidence — Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research began its work. As it marks its 15th anniversary, the growing institute continues to con -

duct research that can help the area’s leaders steer the region through the uncertain years ahead.

“We aim to do research as a public good,” said Ruth N. López Turley, who joined the institute in 2011 and has served as its director since 2022.

Fifteen years ago, Houstonians had reasons to feel pessimistic. The nation was still reeling from the 2008 financial crisis, which led to the collapse of the housing market and the failure of major financial institutions. In that same year, Hurricane Ike slammed into Galveston Island, causing more than 200 deaths and tens of billions of dollars in property damage. Years later, an aerial view of the Houston area showed many rooftops still covered with blue tarps.

The pain of these events was compounded by a sort of collective civic shock, the result of a widespread “this can’t happen here” mentality. Many area residents, drawn to Houston by the prospect of good jobs and a relatively low cost of living, thought of the place as a perennial boomtown, somehow immune from normal business cycles.

“Houston was booming through the entire 20th century, brought about by the tenfold increase in the value of oil,” said Stephen Klineberg, a recently retired Rice sociology professor who was the founder and longtime director of the annual Houston Area Survey.

“We did oil the way Detroit did cars. And you could not not make

money, basically,” said Klineberg. “And it was a city world famous for having imposed the least amount of controls on development of any city in the Western world. Who cares if it’s ugly? So what if it smells? It’s the smell of money. Come on down.”

They came. The Houston metropolitan area added more than 1.2 million people, the most of any metro in the country, between 2000 and 2010. Many of the new residents had no memory of the 1980s financial downturn caused by a plunge in oil prices. But those troubled years were still fresh in Klineberg’s mind.

“It was a total collapse of the economy, the worst regional recession of any part of the country at any time since World War II, in a city that had known nothing but economic boom from its beginnings until the fateful date of May 1982 when the oil boom collapsed,” Klineberg recalled. By the end of 1983, he said, 100,000 jobs had been lost, and by 1986, one of every seven jobs that had existed in Houston in 1982 had disappeared.

Houston experienced a robust recovery in the 1990s, but the 2010 survey results showed that, once again, the bubble had burst. Harris County’s unemployment rate had risen to 8.5% from 6.3% in 2009. The benefits of rising stock prices and a gradually recovering local housing market had not trickled down to most of the area’s residents.

“The average person is still suffering,” Klineberg said at the time.

Thriving Urban Communities

A HOME FOR THE SURVEY

The survey that revealed these dismal attitudes, meanwhile, was settling into a new institutional home. In February 2010, Rice’s Center on Race, Religion and Public Life merged with the university’s Urban Research Center to create the Institute on Urban Research. In a March 16, 2010, editorial, the Houston Chronicle praised the new center, saying it had the potential to “make Houston a key influence on how Americans face demographic change, education, public health and immigration in their own cities.”

Among the readers of that editorial were Nancy and Rich Kinder,

two of Houston’s most influential philanthropists. It helped inspire them to give, through the Kinder Foundation, $15 million to support the institute’s work. In gratitude, Rice renamed the organization: the Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

In a statement, the Kinder Foundation said its initial grant, and a second grant of $50 million in 2022, were based on the Kinders’ conviction that the center needed to grow beyond pure research: “Given that Houston was fast becoming a minority-majority region, we felt that the Houston Area Survey would serve as a solid foundation for understanding regional strengths and challenges and conducting research that provides information that can

be applied to actionable solutions.”

The Kinder Institute would amass the resources and expertise to analyze and apply the survey data on some of the area’s most urgent issues — education, transportation, crime and immigration, among others — beyond the immediate financial struggles.

“It was not just research for research,” said Bob Eury, the longtime leader of a downtown improvement organization and one of the original Kinder Institute advisory board members. “It was research to be used in our community and ultimately in other communities as well.”

EARLY IMPACT

Michael Emerson, a Rice sociology professor, was the founder of the Center on Race, Religion and Public Life. With the merger, he and Klineberg became the co-founding directors of the Kinder Institute. The experience of these two leaders was vital in getting the new entity off to a good start, Eury said.

“Michael was very interested in the underserved communities,” Eury said, and “the institute was launched with a program that was already well known and well respected, with a research person running it, Steve [Klineberg], whom everybody loved.”

The new institute’s first formal office was on the top floor of Lovett Hall. Staff members were hired to add research and operational capacity. And the new “think and do tank” was soon producing valuable insights for policymakers on some of the most vital issues facing the area.

“We aim to do research as a public good.”

Ruth N. López Turley

The Houston Region Diversity Report, published in 2012, found that segregation remained high in some parts of Houston even as the broader metropolitan area grew more diverse. Houston, in fact, was the most diverse metro in the country, and some of its suburbs, including Pearland and Missouri City, were even more racially and ethnically balanced.

A year later, the institute published the Houston Area Asian Survey: Diversity and Transformation Among Asians in Houston. This was an ambitious and challenging effort, involving 60,000 phone calls to recruit 500 subjects for interviews in multiple languages, to sample the attitudes and backgrounds of Asian Americans in the Greater Houston area based on surveys from 1995, 2002 and 2011. The respondents represented 27 nationalities.

Among other findings, the Asian survey showed the flaws in the stereotype of Asian Americans as the “model minority,” a perception which implied that members of other racial and ethnic minorities were less successful because they didn’t work as hard. The survey helped place Houston’s diversity on a national stage.

The institute’s Global Cities initiative put Houston in an international context. It also led Emerson and sociologist Kevin Smiley of the University of Buffalo to publish “Market Cities, People Cities” in 2018, which compared urban policies and lifestyles in Houston and Copenhagen, Denmark. The authors’ research, including Kinder Institute surveys, showed that Houston exemplified

a city that emphasized jobs and wealth creation, while Copenhagen focused on quality-of-life issues.

“Which path each city chooses leads to many other differences between the two cities,” Emerson said, including higher levels of civic trust among Copenhagen residents and, in Houston, parks and waterway improvements funded by private rather than public investment.

Other Kinder Institute research revealed the need for more investment in education and steps to overcome disparities in health care access.

The education report was blunt in its assessment, noting that more than half of Harris County residents under age 20 in 2010 were Latino and another fifth were Black — the two groups most likely to be living in poverty. “The new demographic

Stephen Klineberg (left) and Michael Emerson in 2012

Thriving Urban Communities

realities make it clear that, if Houston’s African American and Latino young people are unprepared to succeed in today’s knowledge economy, it is difficult to imagine a prosperous future for the region as a whole,” the report stated.

Education has been a particular focus under López Turley, who founded the Kinder Institute’s Houston Education Resource Consortium as a research-practice partnership with the Houston Independent School District — one of the nation’s largest urban school districts.

“HISD was our original partner,” a relationship that began in 2011, López Turley said. “The reason why having long-term community partnerships is important is that we can build relationships of trust.”

López Turley used the tools of academic research — data analysis, critical problem-solving and deep

subject matter expertise — to help HISD improve student outcomes. These efforts gained momentum with infusions of support from Laura and John Arnold and Houston Endowment.

“It’s been extremely challenging, and yet we have seen progress,” said López Turley, noting the Texas Legislature’s approval of statewide, allday prekindergarten programs after the institute shared its research and testified before state lawmakers.

FACING DISASTERS

From 2014 to 2022, the Kinder Institute entered an expansion period. Then-director Bill Fulton, a former mayor and urban planner, brought a national perspective.

“When I arrived in October 2014, I knew very little about the city. Most urban experts in the United

States — except maybe Steve Klineberg — simply didn’t take Houston seriously as a ‘real city,’” Fulton said. “Important to urban planners like me, Houston didn’t even have zoning. I mean, really?”

Investments from Houston Endowment allowed the institute to take the city seriously, launching new research programs focused on urban disparity, development, transportation, placemaking and governance. The institute also expanded its community outreach and data efforts.

In 2016, the institute published a key report, “The Houston Pension Question,” which helped guide city leaders in confronting a $3.9 billion unfunded pension liability. Leaders credited the institute’s work in helping avoid a financial disaster.

During this period, the institute contended with three devastating floods, then COVID-19 and Winter

The Kinder Institute regularly participates in civic forums such as this 2024 Glenbrook Valley panel.

Ruth López Turley founded the Kinder Institute’s Houston Education Resource Consortium.

“It was not just research for research. It was research to be used in our community . . .” — Bob Eury

Storm Uri in 2021 — each disaster revealing deeper disparities across Houston.

“A city that has always prided itself on opportunity for all was exposed as profoundly unequal,” Fulton said.

To understand the impacts of these crises, the institute helped launch the Texas Flood Registry, which ultimately collected data from over 20,000 households about the impacts of flooding. The Gulf Coast Coronavirus (COVID-19) Community Impact Survey shortly followed, and it captured insights from over 12,000 Houston-area households about the pandemic.

Housing emerged as an area of focus under Fulton as well, with the 2020 State of Housing in Harris County and Houston serving as the starting point of an annual series tracking how the city — long considered affordable to working families

— was beginning to experience a crisis of declining affordability at a time of increasing vulnerability.

BUILT FOR THE FUTURE

The formative years of the institute continue to shape its trajectory — and the city’s.

Population growth has continued unabated. From 2010 to 2025, 1.5 million people have moved to the Houston metro, making it the second-fastest growing in the country.

The challenges of urban life remain, but they are now magnified with increasing threats from extreme weather, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and a new era of economic uncertainty.

As it has expanded its research, data and engagement initiatives, the institute has tripled in size, now boasting a staff of over 80 research-

ers and support personnel. Research activity has been reorganized into five centers — education, health, housing, economic mobility and population — each with its own team and slate of projects.

The growth and reorganization, López Turley said, are aimed at “setting up the institute’s infrastructure so it’s focused on what comes next.”

López Turley’s research partnership approach is infused throughout the organization. Today, eight school districts collectively serving over 500,000 students are part of the institute’s education consortium. In addition, United Way of Greater Houston and the Houston Housing Authority have signed on as formal partners, collaborating on new research questions around financial security and affordable housing.

“When you compare that to other organizations and other cities, it stands above,” said Algenita Scott Davis, a founding member of the Kinder Institute’s advisory board.

Along the way, the Houston Area Survey has also grown and remains a key piece of the institute’s future, enhanced by the creation of the Greater Houston Community Panel.

In 2025, the survey reached almost 10,000 residents, expanding beyond Harris County to Fort Bend and Montgomery counties — the three counties combined account for almost 20% of Texas’ population — with a response rate of 81%. The size of the panel makes it possible to not only analyze each county, but also sets of neighborhoods within them.

Kinder Institute staff contributed to this story.

Nancy and Rich Kinder with Rice President Reginald DesRoches

THOUGHT LEADERS

Thriving Urban Communities Brain Power

From real-time neural mapping to minimally invasive brain interfaces, Rice is pushing the frontiers of neuroscience through cutting-edge research collaborations.

BY SILVIA CERNEA CLARK AND MARCY DE LUNA

At Rice, breakthroughs in neuroscience are reshaping what we know about how the brain functions — and how we can interact with it.

Researchers across engineering, biosciences and neurotechnology are developing tools and methods that were once the realm of science fiction: optogenetic devices that allow scientists to decode the brain using light, high-resolution neural recording systems to track decision-making in real time and implant-free techniques to monitor gene expression and brain activity from a simple blood test.

“In order to build tools to assist

the brain, we first have to deeply understand how it functions,” said Behnaam Aazhang, director of the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative. “That requires not only new technologies, but new ways of thinking.”

The NEI brings together faculty from across disciplines to investigate the structure and function of neural systems and to build next-generation devices for monitoring and repairing them. Among its most ambitious efforts is the creation of minimally invasive neural interfaces that allow researchers to study and influence brain activity without traditional surgical implants.

The nanogrid is one such device, designed by a Rice-led team in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas Health Science Center. At just onefifth the width of a human hair, the nanogrid enables precise interaction with individual neurons.

“This is the first neural interface that’s compatible with the biological function of brain tissue over long periods of time,” Aazhang said. “It opens the door to research and clinical treatments that were previously impossible.”

Neural recording and modulation are also central to the work of Valentin Dragoi, who joined Rice

in 2023. Dragoi’s lab focuses on decoding how networks of cortical neurons encode and transmit information, especially during complex decision-making. Using custom high-density electrophysiological arrays, his team can monitor neural activity across thousands of neurons simultaneously. “What we’re learn-

“In order to build tools to assist the brain, we first have to deeply understand how it functions.” — Behnaam Aazhang

ing is how populations of neurons dynamically reshape their activity based on behavioral context,” Dragoi said. “That’s essential to understanding memory, perception, and cognition.”

Meanwhile, Jacob Robinson, professor of electrical and computer engineering and bioengineering, is de -

veloping optogenetic protocols that enable researchers to stimulate and observe neurons using light, bypassing the need for physical electrodes. These new tools allow scientists to study the brain’s communication patterns in far greater detail and with less disruption to tissue. “This work will significantly improve our

ability to map how different parts of the brain communicate,” said Robinson, who also leads Motif Neurotech, a Rice-affiliated startup designing bioelectronic therapies for treatment-resistant depression.

Robinson and Aazhang also collaborated on the development of a state-of-the-art neural recording

Thriving Urban Communities

system, which dramatically increases the volume and resolution of neural data collection — a key step toward understanding large-scale brain function and treating neurological disorders.

Another major front of investigation is sleep and its link to cognitive performance. A recent study led by Rice engineers and cognitive scientists uncovered how neural activity during sleep is reorganized across brain regions, offering insights into how memories are stored and consolidated. “The sleep brain isn’t shutting down — it’s rewiring,” Aazhang said. “This has profound implications for learning, neurorehabilitation, and neurodegenerative disease.”

Elsewhere, bioengineer Jerzy Szablowski is designing noninvasive methods to control and monitor

specific brain circuits, including the use of synthetic serum biomarkers that may one day replace brain imaging with a blood test. Robotics expert Marcia O’Malley is building wearable exoskeletons for stroke rehabilitation and motor training. And neuroscientist Caleb Kemere is mapping how memory is encoded in hippocampal circuits.

In the workplace, Margaret Beier is examining how motivational and situational components and traits such as cognitive ability and personality are related to intellectual development throughout the lifespan with a current focus on workplace aging and continuous employment. Rebecca Brossoit is studying employee sleep, organizational strategies and interventions for improving employees’ lives at

work and at home, and the impacts of the built and natural environment on employee well-being.

Across the board, Rice is turning bold ideas into working systems.

Now in its sixth year, the NEI has become a national model for cross-disciplinary innovation. It links brain science to real-world applications, from treating neurological disorders to enhancing human performance. Many of these projects operate in tandem with Rice’s Center for Neural Systems Restoration, a joint venture with Houston Methodist that unites clinicians, engineers, and scientists to advance translational neuroscience and neurotechnology.

This level of integration — combining basic research, device engineering, clinical application and entrepreneurial translation — is what positions Rice at the forefront of the field.

“Rice has always had strengths in electrical engineering, signal processing and biosciences,” said Aazhang. “What we’re doing now is applying those strengths to one of the most complex and urgent frontiers of human knowledge: the brain.”

As Rice continues to expand its research capacity under the leadership of President Reginald DesRoches, neuroscience has become a focal point of institutional growth. Whether in the lab, the clinic, or the startup space, the university is helping chart the next chapter of brain science.

“We’re not just building knowledge,” said DesRoches. “We’re building platforms that can reshape how we understand, heal, and enhance the human mind.”

“The problem isn’t inevitable. It’s a question of whether we choose to fix it.” — Alex Butler

MONEY TALKS

The Hidden Inequality in Auto Lending

Each year, an estimated 80,000 auto loan applications are denied to minority borrowers due to racial bias.

BY SCOTT PETT

For millions of Americans, cars aren’t a luxury — they’re essential. They connect people to jobs, schools and daily life. But for many Black and Hispanic borrowers, approval for an auto loan comes with hidden hurdles.

Research from Rice Business professors of finance Alex Butler and James Weston, published in The Review of Financial Studies, estimates that 80,000 auto loan applications are denied each year due to racial bias. The study, which draws from a decade’s worth of data, shows that

even when credit profiles are comparable, Black and Hispanic borrowers are more likely to be rejected — and to pay more if approved.

Unlike credit cards or mortgages, most auto loans are brokered through personal interactions, not automated systems. That lack of regulation opens the door to bias, the researchers argue. And the numbers back it up: Minority borrowers are 1.5% more likely to be denied a loan than white borrowers with similar financials. For subprime applicants,

that gap grows to 2.4%.

And minority borrowers who do get loans face steeper costs — about 0.7% more in interest rates, or an extra $410 on average over the life of a loan. In some states, the gap climbs as high as 1.25%. For borrowers living paycheck to paycheck, even a small rate hike can mean the difference between stability and crisis.

“This isn’t just about a few thousand dollars,” Weston says. “It’s about access — to credit, to opportunity, to the ability to move forward.”

To build their dataset, Butler and Weston teamed up with Rice Business Ph.D. alum Erik J. Mayer, now a professor at the University of Wisconsin. By linking credit bureau data with demographic information from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, they were able to compare race and lending outcomes across millions of cases, ruling out other explanations like income or credit score. Racial bias, they found, was the driving factor — even though minority borrowers defaulted less often than white borrowers with similar profiles.

The researchers also found federal oversight can help. When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cracked down on discriminatory lending in 2013, targeting dealer markups and encouraging more transparent pricing structures, rate disparities dropped by 60%. But those policies were rolled back in 2018, raising concerns about the return of unchecked racial discrimination.

“The problem isn’t inevitable,” says Butler. “It’s a question of whether we choose to fix it.”

DISCIPLINARY DRIFT

Thriving Urban Communities Staging Complexity

At Rice’s Center for Environmental Studies, climate conversations start with story.

BY JENNA PERRONE

When “SPILL” premiered in Houston this past spring, it wasn’t staged in a traditional theater and it wasn’t staged by a traditional director. The documentary-style play, written by Leigh Fondakowski, dramatizes the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and the devastating oil spill that followed. It was presented in the black box theater at Rice’s Moody Center for the Arts, directed by Weston Twardowski, a lecturer in Rice’s theater program and associate director of the Center for Environmental Studies.

To bring a play like “SPILL” to Houston — the heart of the U.S. oil and gas industry — was a bold move. But for the CES, bold is the point.

“This is a smart play for this place, that is working diligently to not just take the easy stance but which says you have to think about the holistic nature of these complicated money issues, which is a space we at CES thrive and love to operate in,” said Twardowski.

That space — messy, cross-disciplinary, often uncomfortable — is exactly where the CES lives. Housed

in Rice’s School of Humanities, the center isn’t interested in tidy answers to climate change or clean boundaries between fields. Instead, its work is grounded in dialogue between scientists and artists, historians and engineers, students and community members.

“Theater is a fundamentally interdisciplinary practice,” said Twardowski. “It’s a collaborative art form. It’s an important skill set for these big, thorny, wicked problems that we’re trying to deal with in environmental studies.”

Founded in 2019, the CES is the latest evolution of two earlier Rice initiatives: the Center for the Study of the Environment and Society, established in 2002 by professors Walter Isle and Paul Harcombe, and the Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences, piloted by professor Dominic Boyer in 2013. While the CES builds on that foundation, its approach is more explicitly transdisciplinary and unapologetically rooted in the humanities.

“I reject the notion that the arts and humanities don’t have an important role to play in this conversation,” said Twardowski. “But we are far more accepting in acknowledging that science also has a role to play. I don’t think that there’s any part of us that imagines the conversations around the environment don’t demand an all-inclusive, transdisciplinary approach.”

That inclusive ethos has shaped the center’s public programming, including a popular series of lunchtime panels that spotlight faculty, artists and advocates from across disciplines.

“There hasn’t been a good forum on campus for faculty to talk easily about environmental issues across disciplines,” said Randal Hall, interim director of the CES. “One of the things we’ve been doing at the center is a series of lunchtime panels and conversations that are pretty casual but have tackled tough problems about how to communicate

“Theater is a fundamentally interdisciplinary practice. It’s an important skill set for these big, thorny, wicked problems that we’re trying to deal with in environmental studies.” — Weston Twardowski

“SPILL”

across disciplinary boundaries.”

Hall, the William P. Hobby Professor of American History, teaches courses on environmental history but first came to the field through another lens. “My engagement with the larger questions around the environment began with an interest in economic history that gradually began to overlap more and more with

environmental questions of resource management,” he said.

That kind of disciplinary drift is exactly what the CES hopes to encourage. Its mission isn’t to solve climate change with a single set of tools but rather to complicate how we think about it in the first place.

“One of the explanations of what we do that I keep returning to is that

we make all of the questions around environmental issues more complicated,” Hall said. “There are no easy solutions, there are no purely technological solutions, and without addressing the history, we can’t hope to solve anything related to environmental challenges or climate change.”

For Twardowski, the center’s work is grounded in narrative — not just storytelling, but the deeper structures that shape how communities understand risk, responsibility and resilience. “The center’s objectives,” he said, “are fundamentally questions around how we understand society, people, human interactions with the environment and the kind of stories that make sense to different communities and can reach different audiences.”

Beyond panels and performances, the CES recently sponsored a manuscript working group for Rice graduate students and faculty engaged in environmental research. Participants workshopped their in-progress manuscripts over the fall semester, then invited outside experts to provide feedback in the spring.

But the long-term goal, Twardowski said, is as much about space as scholarship: creating a community on campus that’s equipped to face an uncertain future.

“It’s very much about remembering that the places we build fundamentally impact our health in infinite ways,” he said. “I think we’re uniquely well-posed to remember and to remind folks that places we build and inhabit shape who we are as people.”

dramatizes the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and the devastating oil spill that followed.

Thriving Urban Communities

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Hacking Happiness

A wellness app built by Rice students aims to tackle the college mental health crisis.

BY SAM BYRD

When Erica Friedman first became aware of the growing mental health crisis on college campuses, she decided to act. “I was determined to find a solution,” said the Rice senior. Teaming up with fellow students David Zhu, Samhita Vinay, Faith Zhang, and alumnae Lia Kim and Emma Ting, she created Sprout Wellness — an app designed to

“make happiness a daily habit.”

Built around positive psychology principles, Sprout offers daily mood check-ins and customized activity plans aimed at boosting happiness, mindfulness and social connection. “We’re also working on implementing a tracker that will enable users to visualize their mental health progress over time,” Friedman said.

The idea blossomed during a class on positive psychology, a field Friedman said many students hadn’t yet explored. “Through taking a course on positive psychology, the study of human strengths and flourishing, I discovered this methodology could support others in cultivating well-being practices,” she said.

Since January 2024, the team has launched a beta version on the Apple App Store and completed a successful pilot study, showing significant improvements in users’ well-being. Now, they’re refining the app based on early feedback and preparing a broader rollout, with an Android version on the way.

“With Sprout, we aim to give students practical tools to build resilience and take control of their mental well-being,” said Friedman.

“By integrating positive psychology strategies into an accessible, engaging platform, we hope to empower students to develop habits that enhance their mindfulness, interpersonal relationships and ability to thrive in and out of the classroom.”

Backed by the Moody Experience and funded by the Ann McLeod Moody Fund for Student Wellbeing, Sprout is aiming to hack the college mental health crisis — one dopamine boost at a time.

ON THE MEND

Culture of Repair

Artist Julia Gartrell’s “Repair Station” invites students to stitch, glue and imagine a world where fixing things is an everyday act of joy.

BY BRANDI SMITH

At the busy intersection of academic life and everyday student traffic, a striking white-and-yellow structure appeared on the Rice campus last spring. Clad in bright white and stocked with an assortment of yellow tools and materials, “Repair Station” invited passersby not just to look — but to mend.

An interactive sculpture by North Carolina artist Julia Gartrell, “Repair Station” was commissioned as part of the Moody Center for the Arts’ Platform series. Located just outside Lovett Hall, home to Rice’s Humanities Research Center, the installation aligned with the HRC’s ongoing theme of repair, transforming a simple walkway into a space of creativity and reflection.

“We really wanted to have something that got students specifically thinking about repair in a physical way,” Gartrell said.

Her work, rooted in Southern and Appalachian craft traditions, often explores themes of mending and restoration. In 2020, she launched the Radical Repair Workshop, a

mobile initiative engaging communities through making and mending, merging oral history, sculpture and artisanal practices.

“My own work is based in a lot of Southern craft traditions and looking at why we use materials in certain ways,” Gartrell said. “That pushed me to think about repair as a sculptural space.”

“Repair Station” was more than a static exhibit; it was a hands-on invitation. Passersby could fix a torn backpack or reattach a button using the provided materials. Instructional videos, accessible via QR codes, featured craftspeople Gartrell interviewed, reflecting on the changes in material culture.

“They’re reflecting on the future of repair — if there is a future of repair in their particular genre,” Gartrell said.

Frauke V. Josenhans, who orga-

nized the project with the HRC, was drawn to Gartrell’s approach to art as both resource and invitation.

“Repair is an act of care that transcends the object itself,” Josenhans said. “In ‘Repair Station,’ Julia explores repair as something communal, empowering and even joyful.”

The sculpture also served as a provocation, encouraging people to imagine a world where fixing things is both possible and commonplace.

“What happens if repair was a cultural norm like it used to be? We’re in a time period where things aren’t really made to be repaired,” she said.

Students, staff and visitors were encouraged to approach, explore and use the “Repair Station” materials freely. The installation was activated with two workshops teaching specific repair techniques.

“My dream is that the yellow repairs will start to filter out on

campus,” Gartrell said.

That sense of play and experimentation is central to the Platform series, said Alison Weaver, the Suzanne Deal Booth Executive Director of the Moody Center for the Arts.

“‘Repair Station’ exemplifies the kind of thought-provoking, community-engaged work we strive to bring to campus through Platform,” Weaver said. “Julia’s project challenges our assumptions about art, labor and public space while offering something deeply practical and accessible.”

Gartrell, too, emphasized the importance of accessibility: “People should feel really comfortable going up to it, playing and using the materials. You don’t have to know what you’re doing.”

And maybe that’s the point: Repair isn’t just about fixing what’s broken; it’s about believing you can.

Thriving Urban Communities

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

On the Rhodes Again

Rice’s first Rhodes scholar since 2015, Jae Kim heads to Oxford to tackle climate change and global health.

BY CHRIS STIPES

Jae Kim will soon trade Texas sunshine for the dreaming spires of Oxford. The Rice senior just became the university’s 13th Rhodes scholar — its first since 2015 — earning one of the most prestigious academic honors in the world.

Selected as one of only 32 Americans this year, Kim will soon join a global cohort of scholars at the University of Oxford, where the Rhodes Trust covers full tuition, travel and living expenses.

For Kim, born in Korea and raised in New York, it’s a whole new adventure. “I’ve never been to England before,” he said. “I’m excited to build relationships with students from around the world, learning from their lived experiences.”

Kim majored in integrative biology and minored in environmental studies, fields that bridge the microscopic and the planetary. His mission is crystal clear: “Climate change is the defining issue of our time,” he said.

“During my time at Rice, I realized I want to dedicate my career to advocating for the people, animals and ecosystems most impacted — advancing the health of our societies and the health of our planet hand in hand.”

At Oxford, Kim plans to pursue dual Master of Science degrees — one in environmental change and management, the other in evidence-based social intervention and policy evaluation. He hopes to attend medical school and become a physician advocate, shaping policy with a human-centered lens.

Kim attributes much of his success to the experiences he gained at Rice, including his tenure as president of the Rice Student Association. “Rice taught me how to build community and collaborate with others to drive meaningful change,” he said.

“Jae exemplifies the spirit of excellence and commitment to societal impact that we strive to nurture in all our students,” said Rice President Reginald DesRoches. “His passion for addressing climate change and his vision for a healthier, more sustainable world inspire us all.”

Scan this QR code to watch Jae Kim’s journey from Rice to Rhodes

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF FITLOW

Jae Kim

Behind The Scenes

PHOTOGRAPH BY TOMMY LAVERGNE

The Bridge Builders

Inside the Baker Institute’s mission to turn academic research into real-world policy — and train the next generation to do the same — by rejecting partisanship, embracing nuance and meeting the public where they are.

BY BEN BAKER-KATZ

If you ask them to explain where they work, the fellows and directors of Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy will give you several different answers for why the columned structure at the corner of Alumni Drive and College Way offers a critical public service in today’s world of fractured information.

Behind the Scenes

Retired Ambassador David Satterfield, the institute’s director since 2022, accurately describes it as the “premier academically affiliated public policy institute in the United States” because the Baker Institute combines “rigorous academic research with practitioner viewpoints to produce relevant commentary for the broadest possible audience.”

Rachel Meidl, a fellow in energy and sustainability at the Baker Institute’s Center for Energy Studies, describes the institute as a place where “policy intersects with practicality to promote meaningful change.”

And then there’s Neal Lane — described by colleagues as “one of the architects of U.S. science policy” — who says that the Baker Institute is home to “some of the world’s most renowned policy experts … and former government officials. As for me, I just like to talk.”

When the Baker Institute was founded in 1993, Secretary James A. Baker III’s vision was to create a space where academia and applied policy not only coexist, but actively fuel one another. That vision is emblazoned above the front door to the building: “A bridge between the world of ideas and the world of action.”

More than 30 years later, the institute has grown from a small group of public policy experts to more than 200 fellows, scholars and researchers all dedicated to discussing the world’s most pressing and complex policy issues.

Lane, the senior fellow in science and technology policy at the Baker Institute, has served in various teaching and administrative

“Our

future depends on the quality of education. So the real moon shot is figuring out how to change the system to actually improve education across the board.”

—

Neal Lane

positions at Rice since the 1960s.

Following an eight-year stint in the Clinton administration, including three years as assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, he returned to Rice and began working with the Baker Institute. Lane remembers the early years fondly.

“At that time, the Baker Institute was mainly a place where celebrities and major world leaders came to share their knowledge and their experiences with the Rice community,” Lane said.

According to Satterfield, the institute built on that foundation to create a globally admired policy research operation, with more than a dozen research centers and programs that study everything

from geopolitical conflicts to the implications of the artificial intelligence boom to vaccine skepticism to sustainable shipping practices.

“The Baker Institute still attracts leaders from all over the world,” he said. “But more important than that, it’s a place where real work is done — where people with deep expertise write, speak and share ideas that can be translated into actionable policy.”

In other words, a bridge between the world of ideas and the world of action.

Education is at the heart of everything the Baker Institute does, because at its core, bridging the gap between ideas and action is an educational task. Identifying market trends and policy solutions is one thing. But what sets the institute apart is its ability to distill those solutions into briefs and commentary that resonates with everyone, from policymakers to C-suite executives to high school students.

“Policy doesn’t like to be technical; it likes to be very straightforward,” said Ken Medlock, the senior director of the Center for Energy Studies. “Moving from technical analysis that you can publish in an academic journal to something that can be condensed into a 30-second elevator pitch is an art, not a science, and it’s an art we have to master in order to do our jobs effectively.”

Another challenge to bridging the gap, and a challenge to crafting public policy more broadly, is that oftentimes the “best” policy and the “correct” policy are not one in the same. Few understand that dichotomy better than Ed Emmett, who

spent decades crafting transportation policy in Texas and Washington, D.C., before being elected as the county judge of Harris County — a role that, in Texas, functions as the county’s chief executive officer.

“It would be easy for the experts here to say: ‘This is the truth about, say, vaccines. End of discussion.’ But that’s not what public policy is,” said Emmett, a fellow in energy and transportation policy. “We have to meet the public where they are and explain our research to the public in a way that they understand.”

Kirstin Matthews, the director of the Baker Institute Science and Technology Policy program, has worked with Lane over the years to build a program that facilitates communication about scientific advance -

“We’re taking established researchers … and teaching them how to apply what they already know to public policy.” — David Satterfield

ment with the public, acknowledging that overcoming the communication barrier is one of the primary challenges scientists face right now.

“The focus of our program started with the idea of the ‘civic scientist,’ which posits that all technical professionals also have a responsibility to engage with the public because the American people need to understand the importance of what scientists [are] talking about,” Lane said.

“It’s a work in progress,” Matthews said of their mission to communicate with the public. “We have not been successful yet, and I don’t know if we ever will. Science keeps getting more complex, so we spend more time trying to help the public understand it.”

The institute’s emphasis on am -

The Baker Institute has worked at the intersection of research and policy for 32 years.

Behind the Scenes

“Moving from technical analysis that you can publish in an academic journal to something that can be condensed into a 30-second elevator pitch is an art, not a science, and it’s an art we have to master in order to do our jobs effectively.”

— Ken Medlock

plifying its findings to the public is particularly important when those findings don’t necessarily align with the public’s perception on a given topic. This is especially true in research areas into which the public has a greater baseline understanding, such as Emmett’s research into the fuels powering what he dubs the “fourth era of transportation” or Meidl’s research into the ever-changing world of sustainability.

“Oftentimes, our research leads us to recommend policies that go against what most people believe to be the most ‘sustainable’ option,” Meidl explained. “Take managing plastics in a landfill. If the infrastructure to recycle plastics doesn’t

exist in a certain area, then a landfill at least prevents the plastic from migrating to waterways.”

Like most think tanks, the Baker Institute subsists on a combination of individual donations and research grants from foundations, corporations and government. But unlike some similar institutions, the institute remains strictly nonpartisan and refuses to advocate on behalf of any political position. That commitment to accuracy over advocacy, said Satterfield and Medlock, gives the institute’s work added credibility.

“It’s a lot easier to raise money if you pick a side, but that is philosophically something we cannot do if we’re going to inform policy,”

“It would be easy for the experts to say: ‘This is the truth about, say, vaccines. End of discussion.’ But that’s not what public policy is. We have to meet the public where they are and explain our research to the public in a way that they understand.” — Ed Emmett

“It’s a work in progress. … Science keeps getting more complex, so we spend more time trying to help the public understand it.”

— Kirstin Matthews

Medlock said. “I take pride in the fact that when we publish studies, we’ll get criticism from both the right and left. That usually means we hit it right down the middle.”

Medlock added that this data-driven approach has helped forge deeper connections with donors and corporations that help support the institute’s postdoctorate and graduate student positions, along with its internship program. The institute and its fellows consider these positions and programs critical to fulfilling its mission of training the next generation of policy leaders.

According to Matthews, the most important aspect of the internship program is exposing undergraduates to a new way of thinking — especially those who don’t end up with careers in public policy fields.

“Most interns come to us with a science background, but over time

they really start to understand the impact of policy,” Matthews said. “When they go off to medical school or graduate school, they leave with a better understanding of the social implications of their work.”

More than 30 years after its founding, the Baker Institute is still evolving — not just in terms of the issues it tackles, but in how it trains experts to think like policymakers.

In the past two years, according to Satterfield, the institute launched a new initiative — the James A. Baker III Policy Leadership Program — which provides continuing education opportunities for professionals to learn about policymaking. “We’re taking established researchers — whether in medicine, science or engineering — and teaching them how to apply their expertise to public policy. It’s one thing to have the knowledge. It’s another to know how to translate that

“We’re still working on changing the world, and I hope we do a little bit every day as part of this work.” — Kenny Evans

“Oftentimes, our research leads us to recommend policies that go against what most people belvieve to be the

most ‘sustainable’ option.” — Rachel Meidl

knowledge into real-world impact.”

That sense of translation between practice and policy — of building bridges between research and action — doesn’t just live in white papers or working groups. It lives in hallway conversations, intern projects and real-time dialogues with students and the Houston community.

“Watching our students begin to master that art has been beautiful,” said Medlock. “It’s what’s emblazoned on the front of this building — bridging the world of ideas and the world of action.”

Of course, there are also some interns and students who never leave. One of those is former graduate student Kenny Evans, who joined the Baker Institute’s Science and Technology Policy program during his Ph.D. work at Rice in 2008. Evans still recalls his first meeting with

Lane to discuss how his research could contribute to the institute’s work.

“Dr. Lane asked me, ‘So, you want to change the world?’ To which I replied, ‘Of course, but how do I do that?’” Evans said. “We’re still working on changing the world, and I hope we do a little bit every day as part of this work.”

Evans is now a Baker Institute fellow in science, technology and innovation and the assistant director for innovation policy at Rice’s Office of Innovation, where he works to connect Rice researchers with the entrepreneurial ecosystem across the Greater Houston community to promote innovation and economic development.

“We’re not trying to be Silicon Valley,” Evans said. “We want Rice to be an engine of growth — commercially, educationally and socially — not just for Rice, but across Houston’s broader innovation ecosystem. My job in particular is to help bridge the Baker Institute and that greater innovation community.”

That future-forward mindset, according to Lane, will require bold goals and even bolder commitments.

“Our future depends on the quality of education,” he said. “So the real moon shot is figuring out how to change the system to actually improve education across the board.”

As the Baker Institute looks ahead, its continued success will be built upon the strong foundation of its mission: staying grounded in intellectual rigor while daring to imagine what comes next.

Shooting for the Stars

Rice Deans Luay Nakhleh and Thomas Killian are leading the future of engineering, computing and the natural sciences.

BY JENNA PERRONE

In 1975, Rice’s Division of Science and Engineering split into the two schools known today as the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing and the Wiess School of Natural Sciences. Five decades later, these schools are flourishing under the recently renewed leadership of Deans

Luay Nakhleh and Thomas Killian. Nakhleh became dean of engineering and computing in 2021 with plans to continue the success of his predecessor: Rice’s current president, Reginald DesRoches. “The previous dean started doing great work for the school, mainly in the

“I believe, in our lifetime, we’re going to find evidence of life beyond Earth, and it’s going to change the way we behave ourselves in the universe. Rice is making important contributions there, and I want us to be at the forefront of that.” — Thomas Killian

areas of growing the faculty, as well as launching new academic programs for the school,” Nakhleh said. “And when I became interested in the position, it was because of this success that I said, ‘You know what? I could help continue this and build it even stronger.’”

Four years later, nearly 60 tenure-track faculty members have joined the school, as have many students completing new, online masters programs in computer science, data science and engineering management and leadership.

Strengthening alumni relationships has also been a priority, as was highlighted at the schools’ recent 50th anniversary celebrations. “We had a great number of alumni who came back to celebrate with us,” Nakhleh said. “We managed to showcase the success of the school, whether it’s the great faculty members and students we have or the alumni and their success stories.”

In the future, Nakhleh said he hopes to see a continued focus on societal issues like public health and sustainability. “I want the school to focus for the next 50 years on

Thomas Killian

“I want every researcher, every faculty member, every student in our school to also think about social responsibility. How do we create and follow ethical practices in engineering? How do we think about the environment and the impact of our work on the environment?”

— Luay Nakhleh

solving problems of large societal impact,” he said. “We want to tackle these big problems because these big problems require innovative solutions that academia is built for.”

Nakhleh also wishes to address the human element of innovation.

“I don’t want our school to be the school known only for its technical strength,” he said. “I want every researcher, every faculty member, every student in our school to also think about social responsibility. How do we create and follow ethical practices in engineering? How do we think about the environment and the impact of our work on the environment?”

Two buildings away, Thomas Killian, dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences since 2021, reflected on his own first term. “We’ve grown our faculty by about 20%, which is the first faculty growth the school has had in about 20 years,” he said. “That’s allowed us to invest in amazing opportunities, such as growing our Department of Chemistry so it can strengthen its work on discovering new chemicals for cancer treatments.”

Looking toward his next term, Killian also strives to keep social impact in mind. “That’s a big emphasis of the investments that are being done across Rice right now, to have that bigger international impact that comes through doing great research,” Killian said. “Natural sciences is key to that because of how important the sciences are for addressing great societal problems or solving great mysteries in the universe.”

Mysteries of the universe have certainly factored into the school’s past, most famously with John F. Kennedy’s ringing “We choose to go to the moon” speech, given at Rice in 1962. According to Killian, though, they also play a role in its future.

“We’ve supported fundamental work on the exploration of other planets and understanding of how planets form, which informs the search for life on other planets,” Killian said. “I believe, in our lifetime, we’re going to find evidence of life beyond Earth, and it’s going to change the way we behave ourselves in the universe. Rice is making important contributions there, and I want us to be at the forefront of that.”

Whether expanding their faculty, engaging alumni or solving society’s most pressing questions, Deans Nakhleh and Killian and their schools are undoubtedly charting a course for the stars.

Luay Nakhleh

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF FITLOW

Raza Dawood

“It’s important to remember that these tools are accelerators. They don’t replace people but expand what’s possible in the time we spend working, researching and learning.” — Raza Dawood

FURNISHING THE FRAMEWORK

AI by Rice, for Rice

How Raza Dawood is transforming university operations with purposebuilt AI models.

BY KATHARINE SHILCUTT

As Rice’s associate vice president of transformational technology and innovation, Raza Dawood leads efforts within the Division of Operations, Finance and Support to bring advanced artificial intelligence solutions into university operations. With a unique blend of humanities education and technical expertise, he’s developed enterprise AI models now being piloted across campus.

What was your journey from English major to data scientist building AI models at Rice?

When I was at NYU getting my master’s in English, I worked full time to pay for my education as a payroll clerk. While working there, and going to school at night, I began to notice that a lot of my tasks could be automated. That’s what first got me interested in programming — I just wanted to make my own work easier. That newfound passion for programming helped me with my assigned readings, which is how I got into natural language processing. Eventually, I changed my thesis to be a program that analyzed texts based on word counts.

How has your humanities background informed your work in data science?

Considering the main way that people interact with large language models is via written or spoken language, then humanities degrees become incredibly practical. Expressing yourself in ways that an algorithm can parse is as critical as doing the same with another person. But beyond that, I’ve always felt the humanities gave science a reason for being. Why do we care? Why do we want to cure cancer? The humanities provides that ethical and moral framework, so I believe the humanities are coming back in a big way.

Can you tell us more about the models you’re deploying and how you see them being used at Rice? We’re deploying three tools for the campus: NotebookLM Enterprise, Donor AI and Grants AI [see sidebar]. It’s important to remember that these tools are accelerators. They don’t replace people but expand what’s possible in the time we spend working, researching and learning.

What does it mean to create these models at a university alongside researchers known for their AI work?

It’s been amazing. I sit on several AI committees alongside brilliant faculty who focus on responsible AI. They wrestle with moral dilemmas; I try to make those lessons become practical tools. The goal is to remove artificial friction. Done well, the technology fades into the background, and you get a lot more done than you could have without those tools.

What are you looking forward to in this coming academic year?

The team has a lot of prototypes and projects that we’re excited to launch for the campus. We’ve been looking really deeply at how we can provide tools that create equitable access to AI across campus, and we’ve also been working on some new and exciting AI agents to take our work to the next level.

INSIDE THE MODELS

NotebookLM Enterprise: A focused AI assistant that only answers questions using information you provide — PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheets, even videos or audio. Ask it anything about a strategic plan or internal document collection, and it will pull answers solely from those sources, with citations.

Grant AI: Designed to streamline the grant-seeking process, this model quickly matches faculty to relevant funding opportunities. What once took weeks now takes hours. Faculty can scan dozens of viable grants, not just a few, and spend more time writing compelling proposals.

Donor AI: This tool helps align potential donors with campus initiatives. By analyzing donor profiles and institutional priorities, it surfaces connections that might otherwise be missed — speeding up cultivation strategies and deepening relationships in meaningful, data-driven ways.

Behind the Scenes

In the News

Rice experts helped frame the Kerr County flood as a failure of foresight, not just a force of nature.

BY KATHARINE SHILCUTT

Catastrophic flash floods swept through Kerr County on July 4, killing more than 100 people — many of them children at summer camps — and leaving communities devastated. Rice scholars helped the nation make sense of the Texas Hill Country disaster, offering sobering analysis on the intersection of climate volatility, rural infrastructure decay and systemic unpreparedness.

“When you have that little lead time … that means you can’t wait until the water level starts to rise. You need to take proactive measures to get people to safety,” James Doss-Gollin, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, told the Associated Press. The crest was among the highest ever recorded on the Guadalupe River at Comfort, Texas, rising from hip-height to three stories tall in two hours — so fast it can “warp our brains,” Doss-Gollin said.

“In Texas, we … treat floodplains as a kind of good old boy, kind of wink and nod, [as though] it’s environmental red tape. And that’s going to get a lot of people killed,” Jim Blackburn, co-director of Rice’s Severe Storm Prevention, Education and Evacuation from Disaster (SSPEED) Center, told NPR. More cabins at Camp Mystic — the site of more than two dozen deaths in the Texas flood — were at risk of flooding than what the federal government had previously reported.

“There should have been a better system,” Phil Bedient told CNN, calling the devastation caused by the flooding “inexcusable.” Bedient, the Herman and George R. Brown Professor of Engineering who researches disaster management and flood modeling and serves as co-director of SSPEED, said he thought the river should have at least double or triple the number of gauges in place than it did.

“If the county had a flood warning system in place, they would have fared much better in terms of preparedness, but most rural counties in Texas simply do not have the funds to implement flood warning systems,” Avantika Gori told The New York Times. Gori, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, is leading a federally funded project to improve flood resilience in rural Texas counties, where many communities rely on word-of-mouth to learn about impending threats.

Sustainable Futures

Sustainable Futures

SAFE HAVEN

Nurturing Nature

Galveston Bay’s living shoreline takes root.

BY ALEX BECKER

If you stand at the edge of Kohfeldt Marsh near Texas City, it might not look like the front line of climate action — but that’s exactly what it’s becoming. In a quietly ambitious project led by Rice, BCarbon and Scenic Galveston,

this stretch of coastline is being transformed into a “living shoreline” — a natural defense against rising seas, stronger storms and vanishing habitats.

Unlike concrete seawalls or bulkheads, which tend to do more harm than good in the long run, living shorelines work with nature. Picture native grasses, oyster reefs, rocks and sediment all arranged to absorb wave energy, slow erosion and provide a safe haven for marine life. Over time, these shorelines become self-sustaining ecosystems that not

PHOTOGRAPHS

Elena Siemens is one of many Rice students involved in the design and creation of a living shoreline, an innovative project to protect against sea level rise.

only protect the coast but also pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and lock it into the earth.

Jim Blackburn, a professor at Rice and CEO of BCarbon, sees this project as much more than a localized conservation effort. He calls it “one small step” toward a new kind of economy — one that recognizes the true value of nature. And in this case, that value comes with a price tag. The project’s estimated $1 million cost is expected to be covered not by donations or grants, but by something you might not associate with marshland: carbon credits. These credits are issued based on how much carbon the new

The marshes serve as nurseries for the Gulf’s iconic seafood — shrimp, blue crab, flounder and more.

“Without these marshes the coastal fishery would be only a fraction of what it is today.” — Lalise Mason

ecosystem can sequester and are sold in voluntary carbon markets. It’s a clever way of linking environmental restoration to economic incentive — essentially letting the natural world pay for its own recovery. And if it works here, it could work elsewhere, too.

The project isn’t just about shoreline stability or carbon accounting. It’s also a hands-on classroom. Rice students are jumping in — literally, in some cases — through a course that puts them in the thick of designing and building this living

shoreline. It’s fieldwork with a purpose: learning how to engineer resilience while seeing firsthand how messy, complicated and beautiful coastal restoration can be.

For Lalise Mason, chairman of Scenic Galveston, this is deeply personal. She’s seen how these marshes serve as nurseries for the Gulf’s iconic seafood — shrimp, blue crab, flounder and more. “Without these marshes,” Mason said, “the coastal fishery would be only a fraction of what it is today.” That kind of statement isn’t hyperbole. It’s a quiet

warning wrapped in a reminder: These wetlands aren’t just scenery — they’re life support.

So while Kohfeldt Marsh might not make headlines like a new skyscraper or high-speed rail line, it represents something arguably more important: a shift in how we build for the future. Not against nature, but alongside it. Slowly, patiently and with a little help from carbon markets and curious students, a living shoreline is taking shape — and with it, a new way of thinking about our coasts.

The

3,000 foot living shoreline for the Kohfeldt Marsh will protect approximately 300 acres of marshland adjacent to Scenic Galveston’s conservation preserve, which is also a significant habitat for coastal and migratory birds along Galveston Bay.

Sustainable Futures

UNLOCKING POTENTIAL

Beyond Bosons and Fermions

Rice researchers constructed a family of exactly solvable quantum spin models in one and two dimensions.

Challenging long-held quantum beliefs, Rice researchers propose the theoretical existence of “impossible” paraparticles, hinting at a richer tapestry of particle physics than previously imagined.

BY GEORGE HALE

For nearly a century, the world of quantum mechanics neatly categorized all particles into two families: bosons and fermions. Bosons, like photons, are the socialites of the particle world, happily coexisting in the same state. Fermions, including

electrons, are more exclusive — only one can occupy a given state at a time, a behavior that underpins the very structure of the periodic table and ensures that, say, when you sit on a chair, you don’t simply pass through it.

But what if this binary classification isn’t the whole story? Enter the work of Rice physicist Kaden Hazzard and his former graduate student, Zhiyuan Wang. Their recent study, published in Nature, suggests that the quantum realm might be more diverse than we’ve believed. They’ve mathematically demonstrated the potential existence of “paraparticles” — entities that don’t fit into the traditional boson or fermion categories. It’s as if we’ve been viewing the particle world in black and white, and they’ve just introduced us to technicolor.

The notion of paraparticles isn’t entirely new. Back in the mid-20th century, physicists toyed with the idea, but by the 1970s, the consensus was that such particles were merely theoretical curiosities without real-world counterparts, except for some exotic entities like anyons that appear in two-dimensional systems. Hazzard and Wang, however, revisited this idea with fresh eyes and advanced mathematical tools. Utilizing solutions to the YangBaxter equation — a fundamental equation in quantum mechanics that describes how particles interchange — they explored scenarios where paraparticles could emerge. Their focus was on excitations in condensed matter systems, such as magnets. In these systems, disturbances can behave like particles, and the duo’s work suggests that under certain conditions, these “quasiparticles” exhibit behaviors that don’t align with the boson-fermion dichotomy. Imagine a dance where partners exchange not just positions but also intrinsic

properties during the swap — that’s the kind of choreography these paraparticles might follow.

Wang, now continuing his research at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany,

emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of their approach. By weaving together concepts from various branches of theoretical physics and mathematics, they’ve opened a door to a realm of possibilities.

Hazzard adds that understanding these potential particles isn’t just an academic exercise; it could have practical implications.

“Particles aren’t just these fundamental things,” he said. “They’re also important in describing materials.” This means uncovering new particle behaviors could lead to advancements in material science, potentially informing the development of novel technologies.

While this work is theoretical, it lays the groundwork for future experiments. The challenge now is to design realistic scenarios where paraparticles could be observed and their properties tested. If such particles are found to exist, it would not only revolutionize our understanding of quantum mechanics but also open up new avenues in fields like quantum computing and information processing.

Hazzard and Wang’s research invites us to reconsider the fundamental building blocks of the universe. By challenging the traditional particle taxonomy, they’re not just adding new pages to physics textbooks — they’re suggesting we might need a whole new volume.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFF FITLOW

Zhiyuan Wang

Kaden Hazzard

Sustainable Futures

By addressing the recyclability of CNT fibers as they are being scaled up, Rice is paving the way for a more sustainable and circular economy.

SPINNING A SOLUTION

A Surprising Twist

Rice scientists discover carbon nanotube fibers are fully recyclable.

BY ALEX BECKER

In the quest for sustainable materials, researchers often face the challenge of balancing performance with environmental impact. Metals are energy-intensive to recycle, polymers degrade with each reuse and traditional carbon fibers? Forget about it — they’re nearly impossible to recycle. But the Carbon Hub team at Rice has made a discovery that could change the game entirely.

In a groundbreaking study, researchers have found that carbon nanotube fibers can be recycled without losing their original properties, offering a sustainable alternative to traditional materials.

Led by Matteo Pasquali, director of Rice’s Carbon Hub, the researchers have found that CNT fibers can be fully recycled without any loss of their structure or properties. This means these fibers can

be used and reused in demanding applications without compromising performance, extending their life cycle and reducing the need for new raw materials. It’s a breakthrough that positions CNT fibers as a sustainable alternative to traditional materials like metals and polymers.

The team used solution-spun CNT fibers, dissolving fiber-grade commercial CNTs in chlorosulfonic acid, a widely used industrial solvent. They combined fibers from different types of CNTs produced by various manufacturers, ensuring that their recycling process was representative of real-life conditions. The result is unprecedented: Recycled fibers demonstrated equivalent mechanical strength, electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity and alignment to the original fibers.

This discovery has far-reaching implications. Industries like

Sustainable Futures

Scan this QR code for a behind-thescenes look at how CNT fibers can be fully recycled.

aerospace, automotive and electronics, which rely heavily on high-performance materials, could benefit immensely from CNT fibers’ recyclability. Imagine aircraft, vehicles and infrastructure components that can be recycled fully, reducing environmental impacts across a wide range of sectors.

The efficiency of the recycling process is equally significant. Unlike traditional methods for metals and polymers, which often involve high energy use, hazardous chemicals or labor-intensive sorting, CNT fibers can be recycled without sorting, as fibers from various sources can be combined to produce high-quality recycled materials. It’s a streamlined approach that could revolutionize how we think about material reuse.

As Pasquali puts it, this discovery offers a solution to a major environmental issue. By proactively addressing the recyclability of CNT fibers as they are being scaled up, the team at Rice is paving the way for a more sustainable and circular economy. It’s a surprising twist in the story of materials science — one that could lead to a cleaner, greener future.

BY THE NUMBERS

Five Years, Far-Reaching Impact

By aligning science, industry and sustainability, Rice’s Carbon Hub is proving that hydrocarbons can do more than burn — they can build.

BY KATHARINE SHILCUTT

By proactively addressing the recyclability of CNT fibers as they are being scaled up, the team at Rice is paving the way for a more sustainable and circular economy.

The founding message of Rice’s Carbon Hub is simple: to use hydrocarbons to make materials that house, clothe, power and feed people. And five years after the institute was launched, it’s a message that’s even more relevant today.

Beginning with a handful of founding members — including Shell, Prysmian, Huntsman and Mitsubishi Corporation Americas — the Carbon Hub has more than doubled its corporate membership, adding

A lightbulb simultaneously suspended and powered by Galvorn CNT fibers

Saudi Aramco, SABIC, ExxonMobil, Chevron and TotalEnergies to its team of partners dedicated to creating a sustainable carbon economy. Housed within Rice’s Sustainability Institute, the Carbon Hub has also drastically expanded its academic community over the past five years. It now works with the Department of Energy, ARPA-E, the National Science Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation CO2 Research Center and The Kavli Foundation, the latter of which bestowed a $1.9 million Kavli Exploration Award in Nanoscience for Sustainability to an international team of scientists led by Rice’s Matteo Pasquali in 2023 to optimize carbon nanotube synthesis.

Pasquali also serves as the director of the Carbon Hub, which is now working to identify clear use cases for sustainable carbon materials and discover novel ways to manufacture new carbon materials to help reinvigorate manufacturing across the globe.

The Carbon Hub’s academic reach, research growth and industry transformation:

70

Principal investigators across 25 universities, government labs and research institutes in 11 states and five countries

76

Publications which includes 62 published articles and 14 in preparation or under review

46

25 Presentations acknowledging the Carbon Hub

Funded Ph.D. students and 28 funded postdocs

54

$12.4

Million in additional funding enabled by the Carbon Hub Organizations involved in research projects

3

Intellectual property disclosures

at the Carbon Hub’s 5th annual conference.

Sustainable Futures

Driving the Future of Clean Energy

Aditya Mohite and Haotian Wang are turning groundbreaking research into real-world solutions, leading the charge in sustainable technology and industrial decarbonization.

BY AVERY RUXER FRANKLIN

Carbon dioxide and methane are responsible for over 90% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with CO₂ lingering in the atmosphere for centuries and methane trapping more than 80 times as much heat over a 20-year period. Together, they’re accelerating climate change faster than current mitigation efforts can keep pace. Traditional carbon capture technologies remain costly and energy-intensive, often exceeding $100 per ton of CO₂ removed.

But Rice engineers Aditya Mohite and Haotian Wang are developing radically new plasma-based and electrochemical approaches that flip the equation: rather than paying to eliminate emissions, their systems use emissions as raw material to produce marketable chemicals and fuels. By turning pollutants into profit, they’re pushing science toward a long-elusive goal: industrial decarbonization that is both scalable and economically self-sustaining.

Mohite, who leads the Rice Engineering Initiative for Energy Transition and Sustainability, has created the Plasma Foundry, a specialized accelerator at Rice focused on industrial decarbonization that

Haotian Wang

PHOTOGRAPHS

By turning pollutants into profit, Rice researchers are pushing toward a long-elusive goal: industrial decarbonization that is both scalable and economically self-sustaining.

converts emissions like CO₂ and methane into valuable products.

Mohite’s is also the co-founder and chief science officer of DirectH2, which is pioneering ways to integrate renewable energy with hydrogen production, aiming to make clean hydrogen a more accessible and viable energy source. It’s a spinoff that exemplifies how academic research can directly fuel entrepreneurial ventures addressing pressing global issues.

On a parallel track, Wang, a REINVENTS faculty expert and associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, is researching next-generation electrolyzers: devices that use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, reimagined in Wang’s lab to be more energy-efficient and versatile. His approach looks beyond traditional uses, exploring how ion transport during electrolysis can be harnessed for applications like direct air capture of CO₂ and better integration with renewable energy sources.

Wang’s research group is actively working on electrochemical methods to transform CO₂ gas into a variety of useful products, whichhas the potential to turn a major greenhouse gas into a resource. Further bridging the gap between research and real-world application, Wang co-founded Solidec, a climate tech company operating out of the Rice Nexus at the Ion, Houston’s innovation hub. Solidec is a prime example of how discoveries can be translated into market-ready tech, fostering collaborations that extend beyond the university setting. Both Mohite and Wang are

integral to REINVENTS, launched in 2023 within Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing to tackle critical energy challenges by building partnerships across academia, industry and government. The accelerator model encourages companies

to collaborate with Rice research teams to deliver scalable solutions that can move swiftly from the lab to industry adoption.

“We believe our accelerator is the perfect model to solve some of these hard problems,” said Mohite.

Aditya Mohite

Sustainable Futures

No Pressure

Rice scientists repurpose dialysis to treat industrial wastewater.

BY ALEX BECKER

In a groundbreaking study that could revolutionize wastewater treatment, Rice researchers, in collaboration with Guangdong University of Technology, have discovered that dialysis — a technique traditionally used in medicine — can be used to treat high-salinity organic wastewaters.

These wastewaters, prevalent in industries such as petrochemical, pharmaceutical and textile manufacturing, have long posed significant treatment challenges due to their elevated salt and organic matter content. Traditional methods often fall short: Biological treatments and advanced oxidation struggle with

FRESH WATER

Yuanmiaoliang “Selina” Chen and Menachem Elimelech

“Traditional methods often demand a lot of energy and require repeated dilutions. Dialysis eliminates many of these pain points, reducing water consumption and operational overheads.” — Yuanmiaoliang “Selina” Chen

high salinity, thermal methods are energy-intensive and prone to operational issues, and pressure-driven membrane processes frequently suffer from severe membrane fouling, necessitating multiple dilution steps.

Enter dialysis. By adapting this medical procedure, which filters waste and excess fluid from the blood of kidney failure patients, the research team has developed a novel approach to wastewater treatment. In their experiments, they established a bilateral countercurrent flow system where high-salinity organic wastewater flowed on one side of a membrane, and freshwater on the other, without applying hydraulic pressure. This setup allowed salts to diffuse across the membrane into the freshwater stream, effectively separating them from the organic compounds with minimal water flux.

“Dialysis was astonishingly effective in separating the salts from the organics in our trials,” said Menachem Elimelech, a corresponding author on the study and the Nancy and Clint Carlson Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice. “It’s an exciting discovery with the potential to redefine how we handle some of our most intractable wastewater challenges.”

The implications of this discovery are profound. By leveraging dialysis, industries could potentially reduce environmental impacts, lower treatment costs and recover valuable resources from wastewater streams. This method offers a promising alternative to conventional treatments, addressing key limitations

and paving the way for more sustainable industrial practices.

“Traditional methods often demand a lot of energy and require repeated dilutions,” said Yuanmiaoliang “Selina” Chen, a co-first author and postdoctoral associate in Elimelech’s lab. “Dialysis eliminates many of these pain points,

Dialysis

reducing water consumption and operational overheads.”

As industries worldwide grapple with the challenges of wastewater management, this innovative application of dialysis could mark a significant step forward, transforming a medical procedure into an environmental solution.

Dialysis uses a selective membrane to remove salts (green circles) from high-salinity organic wastewater without pressure or dilution. In this counterflow system, salts diffuse through the membrane into a clean stream, while organic compounds (orange circles) are retained. Unlike traditional filtration, dialysis separates salts from organics by diffusion, offering high selectivity and fouling resistance. A pressure-free dialysis process desalinates wastewater by allowing salt ions to pass through a membrane, leaving organics behind.

High-salinity organic wastewater

Freshwater stream or dialysate

Sustainable Futures

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Quantum Leap

Recent Rice grad Emma Codianne transformed a homegrown material in search of superconductivity — and found something unexpected.

BY HONGTAO HU

If you’re looking for someone to prove that physics isn’t all blackboards and theory, just ask Emma Codianne. The 2025 Rice grad once assumed physics was mostly abstract math until she stepped into professor Emilia Morosan’s lab and discovered the hands-on experimentation that drives the field forward.

Codianne’s senior thesis focused on a homegrown compound with a name only a physicist could love: Sr₂Mn₃As₂O₂. Known more casually as “2-3-2-2,” it was first synthesized by a Rice graduate student. The compound intrigued researchers because it borrows patterns from two known superconductors and had the potential to

become one itself — specifically, a manganese-based superconductor, a rare breed in the scientific world.

Superconductors are materials that, when cooled to a certain temperature, completely lose electrical resistance. This makes them extraordinarily efficient — however, current superconductors are expensive to produce and only work at impractically high temperatures. Codianne aimed to overcome one of those hurdles: accessibility.

Emma Codienne

“We use the flux growth method to grow our crystals — much like a science experiment in elementary school where you grow sugar crystals,” she said. Her goal? Transform 2-3-2-2 from a Mott insulator — a material that theoretically should conduct electricity but doesn’t — into a metal. That transition could open the door to superconductivity.

She tried several methods. First was doping: swapping manganese atoms with its neighboring elements like chromium or iron. When that proved difficult, she pivoted to oxygen tuning: changing the oxygen content of the compound to alter its electronic properties.

That pivot paid off. Codianne and her lab

successfully transformed 2-3-2-2 from an insulator into a metal. While it didn’t become a superconductor, the result was scientifically thrilling.

“Through oxygen tuning — this is what my senior thesis work was on — the big finding was that we were able to induce this transition,” she said. “At this switch between local to itinerant moment, which is [in middle state transition], is where theorists predict that very cool things are supposed to happen in quantum materials. It could be unconventional superconductivity or something called correlated topology. That’s why we were hoping for the unconventional superconductivity to emerge there in this compound.”

In keeping with its unconventional nature, the material may still hold surprises. And Codianne is well on her way to finding them: She’s headed to Caltech this fall to pursue a Ph.D. in experimental condensed matter physics.

She credits Morosan — and Rice — for helping her find her path.

“I found a really great mentor in Emilia. She helped me figure out what kind of scientist I wanted to be,” Codianne said. “She supported me as I was.”

Emma Codianne

How It’s Done

How It’s Done

Health Happens Here

Just steps from the world’s largest medical complex, Rice is building powerful partnerships through ENRICH, giving students and faculty front-row access to groundbreaking health research and training.

Rice’s proximity to the world’s largest medical center — directly across Main Street from its oaklined campus — means the opportunity to collaborate with leading institutions such as the The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Texas Children’s Hospital. But these partnerships aren’t forged overnight; they take dedicated work from offices such as Rice’s Educational and Research Initiatives for Collaborative Health.

Established in 2016, the ENRICH office serves as a bridge between Rice

BY KATHARINE SHILCUTT

and the health-related institutions of the Texas Medical Center, providing service and support to Rice faculty across all disciplines and guiding them in building formal relationships with TMC specialists. ENRICH also collaborates closely with Rice institutes, centers, initiatives and executive leadership, providing engagement and support to advance research. The office also works to facilitate the placement of Rice postdoctoral scholars, undergraduate and graduate students in the TMC for research and educational opportunities.

Since 2019, ENRICH has provided $1.9 million in joint seed funding with the TMC, supporting over 50 research projects in fields such as bioengineering, cancer diagnostics and therapeutics, cardiovascular health, neuroscience, behavioral health, general surgery, robotics, imaging and nursing. Partner institutions — including Houston Methodist, Baylor College of Medicine, MD Anderson and UTHealth — have matched these funds, bringing the total impact to $3.8 million.

CLOSE TO HOME

PATENT AGENT

How It’s Done Slicing Through Red Tape

Five questions for Patricia Stepp, assistant vice president for technology transfer

BY KATHARINE SHILCUTT

Patricia Stepp’s office works to take faculty research beyond the hedges into real-world applications. Stepp, Rice’s assistant vice president for technology transfer, has her doctoral degree in biomedical engineering and leads a team of experts dedicated to helping Rice faculty cut through the red tape of patenting and commercializing their inventions.

What is technology transfer, in a nutshell?

Technology transfer is the transfer of ideas in the research lab into opportunities to benefit society and make the world a better place.

What does your office’s work entail on a daily basis?

The Office of Technology Transfer starts with an invention disclosure detailing the discovery from a Rice research lab. Our intellectual property (IP) team then evaluates and secures IP for the invention in the form of a patent. We oversee

Rice’s entire patent portfolio. The licensing team then works to either help Rice startups with licensing technology or market to industry to secure industry partners to develop the technology. Our contracts team works at every stage by helping with agreements, such as industry-sponsored research agreements, nondisclosure agreements, material transfer agreements, collaboration agreements, etc.

I always tell the faculty, “We’re kind of your IP project manager.” When you submit that invention disclosure, we’re not just looking to file the patent. We’re also looking at what agreements you have in place, what obligations you have to funding agencies and what reporting Rice might need to do. We manage and negotiate your research agreements, oversee the entire patenting process and use our industry-standard template option and license agreements. We’re trying to help take that administrative burden off our researchers, because their job is to do the research — we’re working to help protect and commercialize their work.

What is your background? How did you come to this role?

I have a bachelor’s in chemical engineering and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. I worked at a university biotech startup and completed two postdoctoral positions before moving into IP. I was a practicing patent agent at a law firm and then a company, specializing in the biotech and materials science spaces. As a patent agent, I worked on invention disclosures, competitive intelligence,

and preparing and prosecuting patent applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and international patent offices. I spent five years at Arizona State University’s technology transfer office, Skysong Innovations, before coming to Rice in summer 2023.

Your team has grown recently, and they have a wealth of experience. Most are Ph.D.s themselves, right? Yes! We have Ph.D.s in biomedical engineering, chemistry, genetics, medicinal chemistry, physics and quantum chemistry. We need that breadth of knowledge to work with our amazing faculty and researchers across so many different areas of research. OTT has over 50 years of experience in licensing, IP management and contract agreements.

What are funding agencies looking for these days?

They want to see translational research and IP protection. My most important advice for researchers is to have comparative testing, which also helps in the patent process. It is also our job to ensure we work with other offices to uphold our IP responsibilities with each funding agency, including federal, foundation and industry. Collaborations with other institutions are also an important aspect. Rice is fortunate to be in Houston, the energy capital of the world, and to have the largest medical center in the world right across the street — the Texas Medical Center. We’ve built a lot of good relationships with the TMC, industry partners and universities globally.

Patricia Stepp

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF FITLOW

How It’s Done

2016 as a brigadier general after having led West Point’s Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership.

“You have to take ownership for your own leadership development,” said Banks, who most recently served as associate dean for leadership development and inclusion and clinical professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management before arriving at Rice. “You have to do what it takes to turn that behavior change into a sustainable habit, which is why our programs are opt-in, as opposed to mandated.”

LEADER OF THE PACK

The Great Doerrs

Rice is redefining leadership development with free, research-backed programs that build real-world skills for students and professionals alike.

BY HONGTAO HU

Rice is arguably leading the charge in higher education when it comes to technology, whether through the Nexus at the Ion or a newly announced major in artificial intelligence, but it’s also leading the charge in leadership.

The Doerr Institute for New Leaders aims to provide students lifelong leadership training and offers a variety of programs for undergraduates. Founded in 2015 with a $50 million gift from Ann ’75, ’76 and John Doerr ’73, ’74 — both of whom received their bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Rice — the institute is currently celebrating its 10th anniversary. Since 2023, the Doerr Institute has been under the direction of Bernard “Bernie” Banks, who retired from the U.S. Army in

Banks stressed the importance of Doerr programs being self-selected, comparing them to required leadership development activities in U.S. service academies, and Rice students are self-selecting in droves: The Doerr Institute engages with between 30% to 40% of Rice’s undergraduate population — no paltry amount. However, the cost certainly is: Doerr programs are free for students. While the programs come at no cost to students, it’s their accessibility that has enabled more than 7,000 Rice students to participate since the Institute’s founding.

A full 100% of Rice students who participate in O-Week (orientation week) complete the Doerr program match survey, which helps them find the best offering for them — from one-on-one coaching in Activation to group coaching in Synthesis to developing targeted leader competencies in Catalyst. A further 20% of those first-year students go on to

“If a student is truly intent on making a big dent in the universe, Doerr is one of the resources that can help them to do that more effectively.”

— Bernie Banks

sign up for one or more of the Doerr programs and complete them in their freshman term, with over 500 students annually receiving leadership tutelage from International Coaching Federation-credentialed trainers.

And these programs aren’t just for undergrads: Last year, the Doerr Institute enrolled 1,495 students, including 708 graduate students. Doerr also provides invaluable off-campus excursions for cohorts to better understand the practical effects of leadership.

“We had a recent trip down to NASA where students met with the current flight director, Emily Nelson, and they had the opportunity to see how she leads on a daily basis,” Banks said. “Then they got to pepper her with questions: What does her job entail? How has she grown in her own skill set as a leader? What advice would she have for them as they pursued their leader development?”

Students can opt in even further with the Doerr Student Ambassadors program. These undergraduate and graduate students represent the Doerr Institute across campus, participate in focused leader development opportunities and connect Rice students to Doerr programs.

“Student ambassadors range across all residential colleges and a variety of academic departments — they’re kind of like evangelists,” Banks said. “They’ve demonstrated a tremendous commitment to fostering their own development, and usually they’re engaged in multiple programs.”

The Doerr Institute is also keeping up with the times. Marketing and communications specialist Kelley Prust produces the weekly “Leading Owls” podcast, sharing insightful stories about student leadership at Rice, delivered from club leaders and social entrepreneurs alike. There have been 34 episodes produced to date, with more in the pipeline.

Doerr also measures their programs’ effectiveness over current semesters. The research and evaluation team at Doerr is led by psychologists Dr. Ryan Brown and Dr. Aaron Pomerantz.

“They create empirically validated psychometric instruments that allow us to accurately measure any leader development construct we are intent on targeting, for example, measuring leader self-efficacy or leader identity,”

Banks said. “So through these psychometric instruments, we can take pre- and post-surveys to see if any statistically significant improvement transpired.”

Rice students who don’t intentionally engage in leader development activities see little significant growth in their leadership capabilities, Banks said. In comparison, Doerr has shown to foster growth in student-elected categories, such as self-perception and communication.

Rice was recently awarded the Carnegie Foundation’s Leadership for Public Purpose classification, making it one of the first 25 schools to receive this distinction. The Doerr Institute, together with partners across campus, supported the university’s efforts to earn this classification, which the Carnegie Foundation defines as “a commitment to

Bernie Banks

How It’s Done

advancing the betterment of society and promoting the dignity and general welfare of all its members.”

“We also served as kind of the conceptual engine, if you would, for the creation of [LPP certification],” Banks said. “We will continue to work closely with Carnegie as we try to bring other schools into the fold so we can elevate leader development across higher education.”

In addition to its programs for students, Doerr offers professional development courses such as CoachRICE — an International Coaching Federation Level 1 accredited program that equips emerging coaches with foundational knowledge, practical skills and hands-on experience to become an ICF-credentialed coach — and a six-week Measurement Course. This rigorous, practice-based online course is designed for professionals who want to take an evidence-based approach to leader development and provides the tools and language to design, evaluate and defend the impact of leadership programs.

Banks said that, in a time when leadership and character is desperately lacking across the U.S., Doerr fills this need.

“Organizations overwhelmingly say there’s a gap between the leaders they require and the leaders they possess,” Banks said. “If a student is truly intent on making a big dent in the universe, Doerr is one of the resources that can help them to do that more effectively.”

Research on Leadership

Since its inception, the Doerr Institute has invested in the rigorous assessment and evaluation of its student programs with the understanding that most interventions with human beings have little to no impact. This commitment to impact assessment allows them to focus their time and resources on programs that truly work, and remains one of the most unique aspects of the Doerr Institute across the higher education landscape.

In summer 2025, the Research and Evaluation Team launched the first of a series of studies on the long-term impact of our leader development initiatives among Rice alumni. The R&E team also continued to shape its agenda into a three-pronged program:

By the Numbers

1. Developmental self-concept: An examination of individual differences in the extent to which leaders see the development of followers as being central to their role as leaders.

2. Aspirational self-clarity: Studies of people’s certainty in their vision of who they wish to become, and how this clarity is associated with personal growth, purpose in life and general wellbeing.

3. Leadership across cultures: Examining leadership ideals as a function of different cultural norms, and how these norms can positively and negatively influence leader-follower dynamics.

9

6

8 manuscripts published, including an upcoming article in the journal Leader to Leader about the importance of evidence-based leader development efforts both in and beyond Higher Education. currently in preparation or already under review, including a measure of Developmental Self-Concept, which measures the degree to which leaders’ view developing others as central to their identity. studies in preparation to be launched starting in fall 2025.

6

national and international conferences at which the R&E team shared their evidence-based insights on leader development, including the European Association of Social Psychology, the International Leadership Association, the Leadership Educators Institute, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Kravis Leadership Conference.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL STARGHILL

Lydia Kavraki

“Her [Lydia Kavraki’s] achievements in artificial intelligence, robotics and biomedicine exemplify the spirit of interdisciplinary innovation that defines Rice.”

— Reginald DesRoches

INTERDISCIPLINARY INNOVATION

Grand Slam

Lydia Kavraki makes history at Rice as the first faculty member elected to the nation’s four most prestigious academies

BY SILVIA CERNEA CLARK

In April, Lydia E. Kavraki, the Kenneth and Audrey Kennedy Professor of Computing and director of Rice University’s Ken Kennedy Institute, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors in American research. With this appointment, she became the first faculty member in Rice’s history to be elected to all three U.S. National Academies — Sciences, Engineering and Medicine — as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her election marks a milestone not only in Kavraki’s distinguished career, but also in the university’s record of research excellence and interdisciplinary impact.

“I am deeply grateful and humbled to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences,” Kavraki said. “More than an occasion for gratitude and celebration, being elected reinforces my sense of responsibility to mentor and support the next generation of scientists, to guide innovation with care and to ensure that scientific practice remains anchored in human needs and values.”

A faculty member at Rice since 1997, Kavraki holds her primary appointment in computer science and joint appointments in bioengineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering. She was also named a University Professor earlier this year — the institution’s highest faculty rank — marking another landmark distinction honoring her widespread influence as a scholar and leader at Rice.

Kavraki’s research in the field of physical artificial intelligence explores how computers learn, represent and interact with the real world in all its glorious complexity. By pushing computation beyond data analysis toward perception, interaction and physical decision-making, she has introduced new pathways for solving real-world challenges with lasting societal impact.

She is internationally recognized for pioneering algorithms in robotic motion planning, particularly her development of sampling-based motion planners as exemplified by the Probabilistic Roadmap Method. This method transformed the computational foundations of autonomous navigation and remains widely adopted in both industrial and biomedical robotics.

Kavraki’s work in computational biology and computational biomedicine has had a profound translational impact. Her lab has developed algorithmic frameworks to assist in cancer immunotherapy, including tools used at leading medical institutions such as The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. These contributions earned her election to the National Academy of Medicine in 2012.

Kavraki was then elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023 and, earlier this year, to the National Academy of Engineering.

“Lydia’s recent election to the National Academy of Sciences reflects the extraordinary impact of her work across fields that are shaping the future,” said Rice President Reginald DesRoches. “Her achievements in artificial intelligence, robotics and biomedicine exemplify the spirit of interdisciplinary innovation that defines Rice.”

Her leadership at the Ken Kennedy Institute, which brings together more than 250 researchers in AI and computing across campus, has positioned Rice at the forefront of computational innovation. She has authored more than 400 peer-reviewed publications, and her mentorship has shaped a generation of researchers in computer science, engineering and biomedicine.

“Lydia is not only a brilliant researcher but also a dedicated mentor who inspires her students to think broadly and act with purpose,” said Provost Amy Dittmar. “She has shown how science and technology, approached thoughtfully, can be powerful forces for good.”

Throughout her career, Kavraki has advanced a research agenda that bridges fundamental inquiry and societal needs, from algorithms that guide robotic arms in space to platforms that improve outcomes for cancer patients.

Her latest honor is not simply a personal accolade — it is a testament to what sustained interdisciplinary scholarship can achieve.

Rethinking Generative AI

GenAI can spark creativity at work — but only if employees know how to think with it.

BY SCOTT PETT

As organizations increasingly embrace generative AI (genAI) to boost innovation, a central question remains: Can tools like ChatGPT truly enhance employee creativity? A new study from Rice Business suggests they can — but only when used with the right cognitive approach.

Published in the Journal of Applied Psychology and co-authored by Jing Zhou, the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Management, the study finds that genAI — artificial intelligence that can create text, images or other content, like ChatGPT — does not benefit every-

one equally. Its impact on creativity depends on how employees manage their own thinking while they use it.

To test this, the authors conducted a field experiment with real employees in an actual organization — one of the first studies to examine how genAI functions in real-world work settings. Because the team used one of the most rigorous methods in behavioral research, the findings offer rare causal evidence of genAI’s impact on workplace creativity.

The results? Employees produced more novel and useful ideas with

genAI — but only when they used “metacognitive strategies” like analyzing their tasks, tracking their progress and adapting their approach.

In the experiment, employees were randomly assigned to either use genAI or not while completing creative problem-solving tasks as part of their jobs. Participants then completed a self-assessment to measure their metacognitive strategies. For example, they rated themselves on statements like, “While working toward my goal, I kept track of how effective my approach was.”

Employee outputs were then blindly evaluated for creativity by supervisors and external reviewers. A clear pattern emerged: Employees who said they used metacognitive strategies alongside AI produced more creative ideas.

“What we found is that AI tools aren’t a creativity machine on their own,” Zhou said. “They can be a powerful partner — but only when employees reflect on their thinking and adjust their approach in real time.”

The good news for organizations is that metacognitive strategies are teachable. With the right training, employees can learn to plan, reflect and adapt their thinking to use genAI tools more effectively and creatively.

The takeaway is clear: Adopting genAI successfully takes more than just installing new software. It requires training and support to help employees reflect on their processes and think strategically. This study offers a key reminder — it’s not the tools that drive creativity, but how we use them.

FUTURE VISIONS

Where Code Meets Cure

At the Digital Health Institute, Rice engineers and Houston Methodist doctors are remaking modern medicine, from AI-dosed chemo to smart goggles for surgeons.

BY ALICE LEVITT

Noninvasive brain stimulation at home for people suffering from depression. Artificial intelligence-based estimates for how much chemotherapy you’ll need. A wearable device to track a patient’s level of hydration.

These are just three of 19 groundbreaking projects currently active at the Digital Health Institute, a joint initiative between Rice University and Houston Methodist. By the time you read this, there will likely be more sprouting from the minds of doctors

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and engineers working in tandem.

“Harvard doesn’t have MIT. They don’t work together. Stanford doesn’t have MIT, but here in Houston, we have the equivalent of MIT. Rice biomedical engineering is one of the top 10 in the country, and we have Houston Methodist. So combining engineers with clinicians is a great model for innovation,” said Pothik Chatterjee, executive director of the DHI.

“What we are aspiring to do is to change the rate at which innovation happens and especially gets adopted,” said Ashutosh Sabharwal, the Ernest Dell Butcher Professor of Engineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering, who worked with Khurram Nasir, Houston Methodist’s William A. Zoghbi, M.D. Centennial Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine and division chief of cardiovascular prevention and wellness, to create DHI.

Its debut was announced in December 2024, but DHI already has much to brag about. For example, Rice assistant professor Lei Li and Eleftherios Mylonakis, chair of the department of medicine at Houston Methodist Hospital, have already received approval for animal testing for their combined innovation. Their novel imaging technology allows for early diagnosis of fatty liver disease using a smart camera.

“This would be a huge market. And apparently they’ve already found some biomarkers,” said Chatterjee.

Part of the reason he’s so excited for that particular project is its significance in Houston and beyond. “This work came out of some ongoing care that Houston Methodist

provides for patients from the Fifth Ward that are socioeconomically very poor, disadvantaged. And apparently there’ve been chemicals that have been dumped in their environment,” said Chatterjee. “So there’s a much higher incidence of liver disease that can also turn into liver cancer with that population. So if this was successful, this would have a huge impact on other similar communities across the country.”

Besides the go-ahead for further studies, the project has also gotten the blessing of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a federal funding program that recently visited the DHI and encouraged the team to submit a proposal for funding as soon as they saw the work Li and Mylonakis were doing.

And DHI’s work only gets weirder and more wonderful. Another project is centered around digital twinning. In the realm of health care, a digital twin is a patient’s AI double, composed of that person’s genomic profile and personal health history. If the human patient becomes ill, their digital twin can fill in the gaps for treating physicians. Using digital twins will one day tell doctors how a patient’s disease might progress and how to treat it for the most auspicious outcomes.

“All the top institutions like Stanford, Harvard [and] Rice are trying to work on this to see how to make it practical and helpful for clinical decision-making,” said Chatterjee. No longer will doctors be using your weight and a guess to decide on your dose when it comes to medicating you. DHI has more than one project aimed at knowing how much

chemotherapy or radiation a patient will need using AI.

One that’s particularly promising comes from Meng Li, the Noah Harding Associate Professor in Statistics at Rice. Though he’s working on several projects in the cardiology space, one of the highlights also includes work in the OB-GYN and oncological fields. That endeavor seeks to use a multimodal AI model to reduce the amount of chemotherapy necessary to treat patients with advanced ovarian cancer, allowing them a better quality of life and more strength to fight their battles. That project is funded by a seed grant and Rice funds.

Another of Li’s projects combines his talents with Ashrith Guha, medical director of the heart transplant program at Houston Methodist. The pair is already working on a manuscript for publication on the subject of their machine learning method for heart analysis. The creation uses vast amounts of data from electrocardiograms for the purpose of predicting how patients’ right ventricles will function following surgery. Though the inventions coming out of DHI are ultimately for patients, they will help medical professionals as well. Few will be more of a boon to those devoting their lives to the sick than a wearable device for surgeons. With the combined brainpower of Ashok Veeraraghavan, Rice’s department chair of electrical and computer engineering, and Randolph Steadman, the Houston Methodist Carole Walter Looke Centennial Chair in Anesthesia and Critical Care, surgeons will be able to boost the success of their work.

“What we are aspiring to do is to change the rate at which innovation happens and especially gets adopted.” — Ashutosh Sabharwal

Ashutosh Sabharwal

“Ashok is developing automated computer vision tools for surgical training. So when surgeons are training and using their instruments like a tool tip, these goggles or headsets are able to track the performance, and then the surgeons are able to replay the videos or images and help improve their performance,” explained Chatterjee.

The executive director said that part of his role at DHI is to help develop an educational aspect that will allow Methodist’s clinical community to learn more about responsible usage of AI, as well as for Rice engineers to dig into the ins and outs of the medical field.

Chatterjee said that, while fundraising in a city that’s not in the Silicon Valley is a challenge, part of what makes DHI unique is its home in Houston.

“We are one of the most diverse cities in America, and we represent what the future of the American population is going to look like all over, so it gives you really rich data where pharma companies, biotech companies, can test their algorithms, their machine learning platforms, and get insights that are going to be replicable across the country, especially in the years to come,” he said.

DHI has already proved that combining the innovative thinking of engineers with medical clinicians is the way forward to success in both fields. Chatterjee said since DHI was announced late last year, some large companies have already come knocking. And before long, some of Houston’s next change-making medtech companies will be coming out of the institute.

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Breaking Cancer’s Code

With machine learning, bone-targeting drugs and molecular precision, Rice’s SynthX Center is rewriting the rules of cancer treatment.

BY ALICE LEVITT

Rice’s research has long pushed the boundaries of the possible. At Rice’s SynthX Center — short for Synthesis X — that spirit now seeks bold new strategies to pair Rice’s scientific muscle with the clinical might of the world’s largest medical center to fight cancer in ways once thought unimaginable.

Led by Han Xiao and housed in the Bioscience Research Collaborative, SynthX brings together experts in organic chemistry, chemical biology and nanomaterials.

“We know what we can do, and I believe it’s not limited,” said Xiao in his office, surrounded by modern laboratory space. In those labs, Xiao and his colleagues are quietly making inroads that will likely be part of the Emperor of All Maladies’ final chapter.

There are many pieces to this puzzle, but one of the most promising is the use of artificial intelligence in drug discovery and tasks including virtual screenings that will help select

the best patients for clinical trials.

“Rice is not known as a super leader in the machine learning field,” said Xiao. “We needed to find a collaboration. We reached some people from Microsoft, and they got super excited, so we decided to work together.”

For now, the project is hush-hush, but Xiao says that the collaboration with one of the world’s leaders in AI has been smooth, thanks to the fact they’re solving a problem that even those without a medical background can understand. Cancer, after all, is one of the great equalizers.

It could be said that so is AI. Xiao said part of his goal is for cancer principal investigators — including researchers in the realms of breast cancer, prostate cancer, glioblastoma, Ewing sarcoma, pediatric osteosarcoma and oral cancer — to understand the power of machine learning. Inversely, machine learning specialists must be enlightened about the precise problems suffered by people with cancer. Only then will they be able to build new technologies together.

Xiao expects to see the first milestone of a machine learning-conceived drug soon. But the SynthX Center has already made exciting inroads outside of AI. Imagine that your breast or prostate cancer has metastasized to your bones, which happens frequently: 70% of metastatic breast cancer and 80% of metastatic prostate cancer will move into the skeleton, according to the National Institutes of Health. When it does, it plays havoc with bone density, leading to fractures.

BonTarg is a platform that aims straight for the bone, saving it and al-

lowing patients to retain their mobility. “Our teeth and our bones are very unique, because they’re all made of calcium phosphate crystal,” explained Xiao, who worked with Baylor College of Medicine’s Xiang Zhang on the technology. “Calcium has a positive charge. We use a different, negative

Han Xiao

charge that’s put onto the drug. Just by electrostatic iteration, the drug will enrich the bone.”

Xiao is quick to credit his team at Xiao Lab for every stride made, and Rice as well: “Rice is a great school, and I think the leadership has a really cutting-edge vision,” he said. Part of

the appeal of having Xiao Lab at Rice is also the support of Texas-based bodies like The Welch Foundation, one of the country’s largest private funds for chemistry research.

And chemistry holds the keys to drug discovery, which is still our greatest defense against tough can-

cers such as acute myeloid leukemia, for which SynthX is also developing a promising medicament.

“We publish a lot of papers. We get a lot of grants. Yeah, it’s important, but it’s not our major goal. Our major goal is to solve problems — real problems,” said Xiao.

Han Xiao

AI Gets the Dirt on Soil

Researchers employ machine learning to reveal hidden contaminants, offering a faster, simpler detection method.

What if your backyard soil could whisper its secrets — of old spills, silent toxins or long-forgotten fires — and a machine could understand every word? At Rice, scientists have taught artificial intelligence to do just that, using light and code to reveal contaminants invisible to the naked eye and undetectable by traditional tests.

Researchers at Rice and Baylor College of Medicine have developed a novel method to detect hazardous

soil pollutants, even those never previously studied in a lab. This approach combines light-based imaging, theoretical predictions and machine learning algorithms to identify toxic compounds like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and their derivatives, common by-products of combustion linked to serious health issues.

Traditionally, identifying soil pollutants requires advanced laboratories and standard physical reference

DIGGING DEEP

SILVIA CERNEA CLARK

The soil used in this study was collected from Harris Gully, a restored watershed and natural area on the Rice campus.

“There are tens of thousands of PAH-derived chemicals, and this approach allows us to identify chemicals that we may not, or do not, have any experimental data for.”

— Naomi Halas

samples. However, many environmental pollutants lack experimental data for detection. “This method makes it possible to identify chemicals that have not yet been isolated experimentally,” said Naomi Halas, University Professor and the Stanley C. Moore Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice.

The technique utilizes surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), which analyzes how light interacts with molecules, producing unique spectral patterns or “chemical fingerprints.” Researchers enhanced this method using nanoshells to amplify relevant spectral traits. They then employed density functional theory to predict the spectra of various PAHs and PACs based on molecular structures, creating a virtual library of these fingerprints.

Two machine learning algorithms — characteristic peak extraction and characteristic peak similarity — were used to match real-world soil sample spectra to the virtual library. “We are using PAHs in soil to illustrate this very important new strategy,” Halas said. “There are tens of thousands of PAH-derived chemicals, and this approach allows us to identify chemicals that we may not, or do not, have any experimental data for.”

This method addresses a critical gap in environmental monitoring by enabling the identification of a broader range of hazardous compounds, including those that have transformed over time. “You can imagine we have a picture of a person when they’re a teenager, but now they’re in their 30s,” said Thomas Senftle, Rice’s William Marsh Rice Trustee Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “In my group, what we do is, on the theory side, we can predict what the picture will look like.”

Testing on soil from the Harris Gully Natural Area at Rice showed the method reliably detected minute traces of PAHs more simply and quickly than conventional techniques. “This method can identify lesser-known and largely unstudied PAH and PAC pollutant molecules,” said Oara Neumann, a Rice research scientist and co-author of the study.

“The real power of this method,” said Neumann, “is that it works in the wild.” With future integration into handheld devices, this tech could let farmers, residents and environmental watchdogs scan soil for toxins on the spot — no lab required. “We’re putting cutting-edge science directly into people’s hands.”

This scalable approach combines DFT-calculated Raman spectra with machine learning to extract spectral features, compare against reference soil and classify contamination — advancing pollutant detection and protecting public health.

Naomi Halas

BE PREPARED

Forecasting the Future

Rice is building AI that can see the storm coming — and know exactly what it will break.

BY SILVIA CERNEA CLARK

As climate change intensifies, coastal communities face escalating threats from hurricanes, storm surges and flooding. In response, Rice is leading a transformative initiative to harness artificial intelligence for enhancing disaster preparedness and response along vulnerable coastlines.

Last year, an interdisciplinary team spearheaded by civil and environmental engineering professor Jamie Padgett secured a $1.5 million grant

from the National Science Foundation to develop OpenSafe.AI, an open-source, AI-driven situational awareness framework designed to provide real-time, equitable insights before, during and after severe coastal storms.

“Our goal is to enable communities to better prepare for and navigate severe weather by providing accurate forecasts of potential impacts,” Padgett said. OpenSafe.AI integrates

“Our goal is to enable communities to better prepare for and navigate severe weather by providing accurate forecasts of potential impacts” — Jamie Padgett

data on high-speed winds, storm surges and compound flooding to predict effects on infrastructure, such as transportation systems and hazardous material containment.

The project is a collaborative effort involving Rice’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters Center, the Ken Kennedy Institute and Texas A&M University at Galveston’s Institute for a Disaster Resilient Texas. By engaging with

emergency response organizations and community stakeholders in the Houston-Galveston area, the team ensures that the technology addresses real-world needs and challenges.

“By combining cutting-edge AI with a deep understanding of emergency responders’ needs, we aim to provide accurate, real-time information for better decision-making during disasters,” said Ben Hu, associate professor of computer

science at Rice.

A distinguishing feature of OpenSafe.AI is its commitment to responsible AI. The system incorporates methodologies to detect and mitigate systemic biases, ensuring that all communities, especially those most vulnerable to storm-induced damage, benefit equitably from the technology.

“Our aim is not only to develop a powerful tool for emergency response agencies but to ensure that all communities can rely on this technology to better respond to and recover from coastal storms,” said Avantika Gori, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice.

Rice engineers have also developed a complementary AI system for real-time sensing of flooded roads. This framework utilizes data from traffic alerts, cameras and social media, employing machine learning to predict road flooding and assess accessibility to critical facilities like hospitals during disasters.

“Considering climate change impacts, the frequency and intensity of flood events could increase, so we need solutions to better respond to their impacts on infrastructure,” Padgett said.

The long-term vision for OpenSafe.AI includes adaptability and scalability to support other regions facing similar climate challenges. By leveraging AI and community collaboration, Rice aims to promote widespread, equitable resilience to climate-driven hazards as coastal communities worldwide grapple with the increasing threats of severe weather.

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STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Art-ificial Intelligence

Coding meets canvas in Lavender Juma’s unexpected foray into AI-generated art.

BY HONGTAO HU

Computer science at Rice isn’t merely a science of computers. It’s also an art. Just ask 2025 graduate Lavender Juma, whose college journey has taken her from a neo-“byte” programmer to an engineer at Amazon Web Services. Juma also gained interdisciplinary experience through her work at the Moody Center for the Arts.

Initially rejected from the Moody her freshman year, Juma got a call in 2022: The center found her programming skills a perfect fit for “Metaphysical Reclamations,” a project by digital artist Mary Flanagan exploring artificial intelligence and the Anthropocene.

Using text-to-image models VQGAN and CLIP, Juma generated sprawling cityscapes from text prompts. The process was iterative — tweaking prompts, inspecting results and sharing stirring images for Flanagan to render in oil and ochre.

The first few batches were blurry and nonsensical, but Juma wasn’t discouraged. Working with computer science professor Vicente Ordóñez-Román, who developed tools to access Google cologs, Juma

“Climate Parliament” by Rafael LozanoHemmer, plays recordings of voices on climate change.

eventually created compelling images that Flanagan painted.

The final exhibition speculated utopian visions of sustainability: rooted buildings shimmered with glass and foliage, combining trees and human-made architecture.

When she started, Juma was a sophomore with limited AI experience — but ambition and a willingness to learn was enough.

“[Flanagan and I] were like, we’ll learn together, and we did learn together,” Juma said. “I learned from the experience that you don’t have to know everything about AI. … All I needed to do was read code and understand code.

“I’m not really talented when it comes to art, but to see the fact that I can use something that I have knowledge about — technology — and produce art with it was interest-

ing,” Juma continued. “I think that was one of the best projects that I worked with at Rice.”

The project sparked introspection.

“When I was taking my class, I was basically following this booklet,” Juma said. “[The project] shaped me. … I was able to sit back and say, ‘What exactly am I interested in?’”

This project wasn’t just a fluke in Juma’s academic journey. Her passion for art and technology continues in another exhibition with the Moody’s newest installation in the Ralph S. O’Connor Building.

In “Climate Parliament” by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a movement-activated passageway plays recordings of prominent voices on climate change, reminiscent of the sound of crashing waves on a seashore. Juma is currently at work on a website for the piece.

What’s Next

What’s Next

SPACE SCIENCE

Defying Gravity

As Peggy Whitson prepares for her next mission to the ISS, her journey is a living testament to Rice’s pivotal role in the U.S. space program

BY MARCY DE LUNA

Peggy Whitson ‘86 isn’t done with space just yet. The record-holding astronaut — who’s logged more days in orbit than any other American — is preparing to return to the International Space Station, this time as commander of Axiom Space’s fourth private mission. For Whitson, it’s another high point in a career that has redefined what’s possible in space exploration.

Long before she was floating in microgravity or commanding crews on the ISS, Whitson was a graduate student at Rice, immersed in the study of biochemistry. And long before she donned a flight suit, her alma mater had already helped put Houston — and itself — on the map as a launchpad for the space age.

Rice doesn’t just study space; it helped launch Houston into the space race. When President John F. Kennedy stood in Rice Stadium in 1962 and declared, “We choose to go to the moon,” he wasn’t speaking hypothetically. That speech marked a turning point — not just for the U.S. space

program, but for Rice and Houston alike.

What’s less known is how Rice helped make Houston NASA’s home base in the first place.

Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as the U.S. geared up to put humans in space, NASA began searching for a new site for its Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Johnson Space Center). Cities across the country were in the running. But Rice played a strategic — and deeply persuasive — role in tilting the scales.

Rice alumnus and then-hair of the Rice Board of Governors, George R. Brown was instrumental in the effort. Brown not only lobbied NASA on Houston’s behalf, but also offered a 1,000-acre tract of land — donated by Rice and Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil) — as a potential site for the center. That land became the Johnson Space Center. This bold move, along with Houston’s proximity to key military and industrial infrastructure, sealed the deal.

And that was just the beginning.

Within a year, Rice established the nation’s first Department of Space Science in 1963, cementing its position as a scientific partner to NASA and a key pipeline for future space talent. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon. On that historic mission, they carried with them a lunar dust detector experiment designed by Rice professor Brian O’Brien.

For decades since, Rice has remained a vital collaborator with

NASA, contributing to research in everything from space weather modeling to planetary science. In recent years, Rice scientists have studied the effects of microgravity on human cells, developed technologies for offworld exploration and helped plan lunar missions.

Rice is also a key player in nurturing the next generation of space explorers. Just last year, the Rice Space Institute — which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year — hosted the prestigious International Space University’s Space Studies Program, bringing researchers, astronauts and industry leaders from around the globe to campus.

It’s no surprise, then, that Whitson’s trajectory has been partly shaped by the university’s strong pull toward space. She earned her Ph.D. from Rice in 1986 and joined NASA as a researcher just a year later. Over the course of her career, she’s flown three long-duration missions, led as NASA’s first female chief astronaut and accumulated an awe-inspiring 675 days in space.

In 2023, she became the first woman to command a private mission to the ISS (Axiom’s Ax-2), and now she’s preparing to do it again for Ax-4, a mission featuring astronauts from Poland, Sweden and Turkey.

As Whitson prepares to command Ax-4, she does so with the experience of three prior missions and a reputation as one of the most capable leaders in spaceflight. But even as she continues to break barriers, she remains grounded in her roots.

When she returned to Rice in 2024 to deliver the undergraduate commencement address, Whitson spoke about embracing the unknown, taking unconventional paths and trusting in your own trajectory. “You don’t have to follow the well-worn trail to get to your goal,” she told graduates.

Whitson may be launching from Earth again soon — but she’ll carry with her a little piece of Rice, a university whose ambitions have always reached far beyond its campus, beyond Houston and beyond gravity itself.

Astronaut Peggy Whitson floats in the cupola on board the International Space Station in 2017.

Peggy Whitson delivered the commencement address at Rice in 2024.

What’s Next Build Less, Build Better

At the Carbon Hub annual conference at Rice, one architect made a surprising case for carbon nanotubes — as poetry.

BY KATHARINE SHILCUTT

Juan José Castellón landed in Houston straight from the Venice Biennale, where global visions of the future spilled across galleries and pavilions. He arrived not just with jet lag but with a warning — and a challenge.

“We don’t yet know what’s coming,” he told the crowd at Rice’s Carbon Hub annual conference May 12. “And that’s a problem.” The celebrated architect and Rice professor wasn’t just talking about materials science. He was talking about meaning.

In a room full of engineers, industrialists and carbon wonks, Castellón stood out on a conference panel dedicated to “Introducing Advanced Materials Into Applications” — part philosopher, part provocateur. “Ask a brick what it likes,” he said, invoking architect Louis Kahn.

Juan José Castellón

“It will say: ‘I like an arch.’” Then he smiled. “So the question is — what do our new materials like? And how can we listen?”

Castellón was there to talk about carbon nanotubes — those ultralight, ultra-strong carbon structures with near-mythic properties. They’re 100 times stronger than steel, more conductive than copper and thin as a virus. But for Castellón, the promise of CNTs wasn’t just mechanical. It was societal.

“We have to understand what the world needs,” he said. “What does sustainability mean? How can we build better? How can we connect? How can we integrate science and society in a meaningful way?”

Castellón, co-founder of xmade — an architectural firm based in Basel, Switzerland, and Barcelona, Spain — and a rising voice in sustainable design, is partnering with DexMat, a CNT-based materials startup spun out of Rice, to explore how these miraculous fibers can transform architecture. Not just as a gimmick, but as a gesture. An answer. A conversation starter.

“When you see something built beautifully with less — something that performs but also inspires — you don’t need an instruction manual,” he said. “You feel it. It makes the future tangible.”

Others on the panel emphasized production scale, market disruption and grid infrastructure, and Castellón pulled the conversation toward purpose. “This isn’t just about performance. It’s about value,” he said. “Not monetary value — but what something means to the people who use it, live with it, build it.”

What’s Next THE 411 ON CNTS

Size

About 50,000 times

thinner than a human hair

CNTs are like rebar for the 21st century — only smarter, lighter and ready to transform everything from the power grid to public libraries. They offer a lower environmental cost than mining metals like copper and are made from hydrocarbon feedstocks, including natural gas and even plastic waste. And CNTs can support a circular carbon economy by turning emissions into materials.

Structure

Cylindrical tubes made of a single layer of carbon atoms

Strength

Up to 100 times stronger than steel by weight

More conductive than copper Weight

Extremely lightweight and flexible

WHY ARCHITECTS AND ENGINEERS LOVE THEM

Tensile strength

Enables ultralight structures that resist tension and bending

Electrical conductivity

Can replace traditional copper wiring in smart buildings, aerospace and even electric vehicles

Thermal conductivity

Dissipates heat efficiently, critical for electronics and extreme environments

Low density Ideal for lightweight construction and mobility applications

CNTS ARE ALREADY IN DEVELOPMENT FOR

Submarine power cables

Battery casings for EVs

Lightweight wiring in satellites and aircraft

Architectural tension structures and design prototypes

BUILDING WITH LESS

Juan José Castellón’s Vision for Future Cities

Castellón has been inspired by the possibilities presented by CNTs, but first he needed to understand exactly how they work. The first step was to test the capacity to fabricate with robots, and now he’s trying to understand the structural performance of the fibers. Next, he said, will be incorporating conductivity to find ways to integrate other potential uses, such as harvesting energy or lighting. “I’m focusing on this material because I can envision where it will lead to — to a new paradigm — and I’m trying to follow in this direction,” he told the crowd at the Carbon Hub annual conference. “This is the material that, to me, has many answers to my questions.”

Nature-inspired design

Castellón draws from spiderwebs and other natural systems to create ultralight structures that use minimal material while maximizing performance.

Carbon fiber innovation

Working with CNT fibers, his team prototypes woven structural components that are lightweight, strong and potentially conductive — opening doors to energy-harvesting buildings.

Robotic fabrication meets architecture

No more manual cable-tightening. Robotic systems now help spin intricate netlike facades that can respond to sunlight and temperature, adjusting to the environment in real time.

Reimagining the building skin

Forget static glass. Castellón’s cable-net prototypes offer a breathable, adaptive alternative to traditional facades, promising better energy performance and dynamic aesthetics.

From ceramics to carbon futures

Merging Barcelona’s ceramic traditions with futuristic materials, his modular rooftop systems collect rainwater, provide shade and could transform urban skylines.

Paradigm shift

Castellón’s ultimate aim? A new material culture that connects structure, sustainability and beauty — one thread at a time.

It wasn’t an abstract appeal. DexMat’s CEO Bryan Guido Hassin followed with real-world stakes: copper is expensive, toxic to extract and geopolitically messy. CNTs, by contrast, are made from abundant feedstocks and offer exponential gains in strength-to-weight ratio. “We’re solving real pain points,” Hassin said. “And yes, we want the tech to scale. But it has to matter, too.”

F1 engineer Claudio Santoni, engineering director for Aston Martin, chimed in from the world of elite motorsports, where milliseconds matter more than margins. “We don’t patent — we just move fast,” he said, recounting how carbon fiber monocoques were smuggled into racing in the 1980s. Today, Santoni is collaborating with SABIC and Aramco to test CNT-based battery casings and components. “It’s not just a science problem. It’s a timing problem. It’s a design problem.”

And for Dhaval Shah, general manager for corporate technology and innovation at SABIC, the problem is also one of alignment — between producers, designers, policymakers and educators. But that’s exactly where Castellón wants to live.

“We need a mindset that starts in our universities but moves out into the world,” he said. “That includes citizens, students, institutions. People. What do they need? How can we offer that? How do we build with less, but better?”

If you ask a CNT what it likes, it probably doesn’t say much yet. But if you weave it into a cable net structure, a fibrous canopy or a cathedral of tensile possibility — maybe it speaks after all.

Global Ambitions Take Root in India

From new collaborations with Infosys and IIT Madras to faculty-led initiatives, Rice’s India campus is gaining ground — and looking to expand beyond Bengaluru.

BY JULIANA LIGHTSEY

Since Rice’s ribbon-cutting ceremony in Bengaluru last November, which formally announced the uni-

versity’s Rice Global India initiative, the university’s collaborations and involvement in the region have continued to expand.

“We’re taking next steps with a lot of the industry partners we met with in November,” said Rice’s vice president for global strategy, Caroline Levander.

One such step is a new strategic partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, complementing Rice’s existing partnerships with IIT Kanpur and the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. The Madras partnership holds promise for specific fields of research, Levander said, particularly in physics.

During a visit to India in June, Levander returned to Houston with a slate of new partnerships and initiatives involving some of the country’s leading institutions — including Infosys, an international digital technology company.

Founded in Bengaluru, Infosys now operates a sprawling campus in India’s third-largest city. Rice Global is in discussions with the company to create student opportunities such as fall internships and fellowships.

“The Infosys campus is astounding,” Levander said. “It’s a beautiful place for Rice students to live, to work [and] to develop a corporate educational context.”

Levander also met with Chevron India to explore joint programs in robotics and artificial intelligence.

“Chevron is the country’s head of innovation, and one of the big goals of Rice Global India is to accelerate our industry relationships and partnerships,” Levander said. “So this is a really terrific opportunity to be outside of Houston, to be different or faster than what we do inside of Houston.”

In March, Rice Global India launched three initiatives to expand research and impact in India: supplemental grant support, a faculty

What’s Next

impact multiplier program and joint faculty research awards.

“Those are all new, and faculty have been applying to those, so that has been wonderful,” Levander said.

The faculty impact multiplier program is designed to support faculty who are already traveling to India, facilitating their participation in events such as meeting with local educational leaders or giving talks at Indi-

an universities in order to strengthen Rice’s presence in the country.

“The challenge is that Rice is a largely unknown brand in India,” Levander said. “So any time a faculty member makes the long trip to be there, we want to support them. We’re trying to increase awareness of who we are as a university, and I think the best way to do that is have our faculty be the voice of the university — and so

far we’ve had wonderful uptake.”

Additionally, Levander visited Hyderabad, home to the entrepreneurial launchpad T-Hub. Rice Global India previously explored collaborative opportunities with T-Hub, and Levander said they’re currently in talks to provide market access for startup ventures between Houston and India.

As Rice’s global strategy continues to develop, Levander said the university sees opportunity for further involvement in other cities in India and beyond.

“The opportunities are really vast,” she said. “Hyderabad looks very promising, and there are opportunities beyond those two cities that we’re still exploring.” Delhi, she said, will inevitably be part of Rice’s strategy for India, too, as the government center for the country.

Rice’s most established international initiative is its Paris campus, which functions as a research hub, conference site and host for student programs. Levander, who oversees both the Paris and India strategies, said a recent conversation at a tech summit in Paris sparked ideas for bridging the two regions.

“I was talking to the chief innovation officer at CNS, the French government’s space exploration office,” Levander said. “And he said, you know we have a [Bengaluru] office. And I was like, ‘Oh, what a great opportunity to think about a trilateral network focused on space and exploration.’”

For Levander, that offhand conversation in Paris captured what Rice Global is about: unexpected links, real opportunities and a strategy that moves as fast as the world does. “We’ll go where the ideas take us,” she said.

PHOTO BY

Index

Aazhang, Behnaam 40—42

Banks, Bernie 82—84

Bedient, Phil 64

Beier, Margaret 6, 42

Blackburn, Jim 60, 64

Brown, Ryan 83

Brown, Tony 11

Butler, Alex 43

Casey, Emmie 24

Castellón, Juan José 6, 102—104

Chabbi, Archit 22—23

Chatterjee, Pothik 90—91

Codianne, Emma 76

Dao, Tam 29

Dawood, Raza 59

DesRoches, Reginald 5, 11, 42, 48, 87

Dittmar, Amy 6, 87

Doss-Golin, James 60

Dragoi, Valentin 40—41

Elimelech, Menachem 74—75

Emerson, Michael 36

Emmett, Ed 52—54

English, Kristi 11

Evans, Kenny 55

Fagundes, Chris 11

Friedman, Erica 46

Gori, Avantika 64, 97

Gustavsson, Anna-Karin 16—17

Halas, Naomi 95

Hall, Randal 44—45

Hazzard, Kaden 66—67

Hu, Ben 97

Johns-Krull, Christopher 15

Juma, Lavender 98

Kavraki, Lydia 6, 86—87

Kemere, Caleb 42

Killian, Tom 14, 56—57

Kim, Jae 48

Kuye, Tomi 24

Lane, Neal 52—53, 55

Levander, Caroline 105—106 Li, Lei 90—91 Li, Meng 90—91

López-Turley, Ruth 35, 38 Matthews, Kirstin 53—55

Medlock, Ken 52, 54—55

Meidl, Rachel 51, 54—55

Mohite, Aditya 72—73

Morosan, Emilia 76

Nakhleh, Luay 56—57 Neumann, Oara 95

Oden, Maria 24 O’Malley, Marcia 42

Ostherr, Kirsten 18

Padgett, Jamie 96—97

Pasquali, Matteo 68—71 Pomerantz, Aaron 83 Prust, Kelley 83

Jacob 41 Sabharwal, Ashutosh 90—91

Satterfield, David 51—55

Sentfle, Thomas

Anshu 28—29 Stepp, Patricia

Strothman, Tyler 32

Szablowski, Jerzy 42

Tour, James 6, 12—15

Trömel, Adrian 31

Twardowski, Weston 44—45

Veeraraghavan, Ashok 90—91

Veiseh, Omid 27

Wang, Haotian 72—73

Weaver, Alison 18, 47

Weston, James 43

Whitson, Peggy 100—101

Xiao, Han 92—93

Zhou, Jing 6, 88—89

Rice University, Office of Research MS-16

P.O. Box 1892 , Houston, TX 77251-1892

One Strong Swing

A swing suspended by the thinnest of carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers outside the entrance to Rice’s O’Connor Building for Engineering and Science was the number-one photo opp at this year’s Carbon Hub annual meeting in May. Rice researchers have engineered wet-spun CNT fibers (see “A Surprising Twist,” Page 68) that now outperform Kevlar in tensile strength and are closing in on copper’s conductivity, doubling both metrics every three years over nearly two decades.