Rice Magazine | Winter 2021

TOGETHER, APART SCENES FROM FALL 2020

WINTER 2021

ON THE COVER Oct. 26, Alumni Drive and College Way A team of architecture students designed and built seesaws as part of a public art competition, photo by Jeff Fitlow 2 RICE M AG A ZINE W IN T ER 202 1

ONE FOR THE BOOKS

Oct. 17, Fondren Library Freshman Mary Gwen Milburn selects a book, photo by Laura Semro

The fall 2020 semester began in the midst of a relentless pandemic. But Rice was ready, and about 40% of undergraduates returned in August to live on campus. Six Rice students from the RAW Photography Club, along with staff photographers, captured scenes of student life, adjusted for this moment.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

Jacar Baldwin ’22, Jeff Fitlow, Genyi Huang ’22, Tommy LaVergne, Yi Luo ’22, Alfonso Peláez ’22, Laura Semro ’23, Channing Wang ’22 and Vince Wang ’23

See more student perspectives from the fall semester at magazine.rice.edu.

M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 3

Oct. 21, Provisional Campus Facilities The exterior of one of the tents being used as alternative classrooms, photo by Vince Wang

Oct. 9, Duncan College Quad Junior Jacob Nieto cheers on students at a Friday in the Quad event, photo by Channing Wang

Oct. 6, West Lot 3 A student waits for the shuttle, photo by Alfonso Peláez 4 RICE M AG A ZINE W IN T ER 202 1

Oct. 23, Reckling Roost

Oct. 20, Duncan Hall

Sophomore Ben Walls at a campus voting station, photo by Laura Semro

A student on the move, photo by Genyi Huang

Nov. 11, Ray Courtyard Enjoying the scenery outside of Rice Memorial Center, photo by Jacar Baldwin

Oct. 6, Brochstein Pavilion A socially distanced study space, photo by Alfonso Peláez

Sept. 17, Sewall Hall A class is taught both remotely and in person, photo by Tommy LaVergne

Nov. 3, Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen Introduction to Engineering Design class, photo by Alfonso Peláez 6 RICE M AG A ZINE W IN T ER 202 1

Sept. 17, Herzstein Hall Esther Fernรกndez teaches Spanish, photo

by Tommy LaVergne

Nov. 17, Anderson Hall Architecture student Yi Luo photographs her final model for ARCH 301, photo by Alfonso Pelรกez

Nov. 13, Shepherd School of Music Graduate student Tyler Martin practices the flute, photo by Jacar Baldwin

Oct. 24, Shepherd School of Music A brass quintet coaching session with Barbara Butler, photo by Yi Luo

Oct. 6, Anderson Hall An architecture critique session with Mark Wamble, photo by Yi Luo

Oct. 28, Sewall Courtyard A live model session for Josh Bernstein’s Life Drawing class, photo by Laura Semro

M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 9

Sept. 19, Central Quad Students on a lunch break, photo by Genyi Huang

Oct. 6, Rice Memorial Center Safety measures in the RMC, photo by Alfonso Pelรกez

Oct. 17, West Servery Sophomore Priya Trakru at a distance, photo by Laura Semro

Nov. 11, Rice Coffeehouse Coffeehouse serves loyal customers, photo by Jacar Baldwin

Oct. 13, Baker College Kitchen Individually wrapped fruits, photo by Vince Wang

Dec. 7, Anderson Hall Jam session, photo by Jeff Fitlow

Oct. 17, Sid Richardson College Sophomores Franco Draguicevic and Travis Dowd and freshman Jacob Flynn practice volleyball, photo by Laura Semro

Oct. 20, Provisional Campus Facilities A student helps paint a mural by artist GONZO247, photo

by Genyi Huang

Oct. 7, Greenbriar Lot A lap around the bicycle track, photo by Alfonso Peláez M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 11

RICE MAGAZINE WINTER 2021

1

32

40

The fall 2020 semester was like no other. Student and staff photographers captured it on film.

Rice roommates Barney Graham ’75 and Bill Gruber ’75 are at the forefront of lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines.

Mark Little ’08 leads a collaborative approach to rural economic development in North Carolina.

One for the Books

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Solving the Vaccine Puzzle

The Changemaker

ILLUSTRATION BY JONATHAN BARTLETT

CONTENTS

FEATURES

RICE UNIVERSITY, PHOTO BY TOMMY LAVERGNE, PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHELLE BOWEN

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PHOTO BY TOMMY LAVERGNE, IMAGE COURTESY OF PATRICK HARTIGAN/

RICE MAGAZINE WINTER 2021

DEPARTMENTS Sallyport

Optimistic students, a new RMC, Election Systems course, statue protests, film buff

17

Wisdom

23

Star-forming nebula, Kirsten Ostherr, onstage safety study, “Doc Talks” podcast, COVID-19 in wastewater, faculty books

Alumni

45

Michelle Bowen ’15 writes home, Mishal Thadani ’12 on clean energy, Classnotes highlights, Q&A with Aparna Shewakramani ’07

Last Look

50

The campus squirrels are alive and well.

M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 13

FEEDBACK Our Fall 2020 issue, launched mid-semester, drew a wide variety of feedback. Here is a sampling of reader responses drawn from emails, an online survey and Google Analytics.

You Enjoyed

“Flex Space” New tents provide room for classes and clubs to meet safely.

“The picture of the COVID-19 tents instantly reminded me of the Quonset huts that housed the media center and art department when we were at Rice. I’m sure these [structures] are better, but the resemblance was too striking!”

— Jan Koenig Philpy ’73 (via email)

“High Scores” Composer Germaine Franco ’84 moves audiences and creates opportunities for young people in her community.

“Amazing. So impressed.

Had just rewatched ‘Coco’ with one of my kids, so [it] was relevant to us.”

“LOVED this article about a very successful and interesting Latinx Rice graduate.”

“A Passion for Justice” Elizabeth Baird Saenger ’64 has dedicated much of her life to fighting for the civil rights of others.

“So impressed with how people make a difference where they can.”

“I am thrilled to see the intellectual diversity represented

by Rice grads.”

75%

of survey respondents say that Rice Magazine helps them stay connected to Rice.

Winter 2021 PUBLISHER

Office of Public Affairs Linda Thrane, vice president EDITOR

Lynn Gosnell Most Read Online “20 in Their 20s” We featured 20 alumni in their 20s who are each clearing a particular path — via music, public health, medicine, architecture, journalism, law, social justice advocacy, visual arts, engineering or biology — toward a better, more just world.

“We’ve Been Here Before” What does the history of the yellow fever epidemic tell us about the politics of disease today?

Historian Sean Morey Smith ’05 explains.

76%

said that they learned something new about Rice by reading the Fall 2020 issue.

If you missed any of these stories, go to magazine.rice.edu to catch up.

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RICE MAGAZINE

ART DIRECTOR

Alese Pickering CREATIVE SERVICES

Jeff Cox, senior director EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Tracey Rhoades ASSISTANT EDITOR

Kyndall Krist PHOTOGRAPHERS

Tommy LaVergne Jeff Fitlow PROOFREADER

Jenny West Rozelle ’00 CONTRIBUTORS

Jonathan Bartlett, Adriana Bellet, Michelle Bowen ’15, Jade Boyd, Robin Doody ’14, Martin Gee, Cindy George, Dare Kumolu-Johnson, Jennifer Latson, Delphine Lee, Elizabeth Leland, David Levin, Amy McCaig, Alex Eben Meyer, Paddy Mills, Divya Pande ’06, Katharine Shilcutt, Mike Williams INTERNS

Savannah Kuchar ’22 Mariana Nájera ’21 Rice Magazine is published four times a year and is sent to university alumni, faculty, staff, parents of undergraduates and friends of the university. © January 2021, Rice University

FROM THE EDITOR THE RICE UNIVERSITY BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Robert T. Ladd, chair; J.D. Bucky Allshouse; Donald Bowers; Bart Broadman; Nancy Packer Carlson; Mark D. Dankberg; D. Mark Durcan; Michol L. Ecklund; Douglas Lee Foshee; Wanda Gass; Terrence Gee; James T. Hackett; Tommy Huie; Patti Lipoma Kraft; Holli Ladhani; L. Charles Landgraf; Lynn A. Lednicky; Elle Moody; Brian Patterson; David Rhodes; Jeffery A. Smisek; Guillermo Treviño; James Whitehurst; Randa Duncan Williams; Huda Y. Zoghbi ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS

David W. Leebron, president; Reginald DesRoches, provost; Kathy Collins, vice president for Finance; Kathi Dantley Warren, vice president for Development and Alumni Relations; Klara Jelinkova, vice president for International Operations and IT; Kevin Kirby, vice president for Administration; Caroline Levander, vice president for Global and Digital Strategy; Yvonne Romero Da Silva, vice president for Enrollment; Allison Kendrick Thacker, vice president for Investments and treasurer; Linda Thrane, vice president for Public Affairs; Richard A. Zansitis, vice president and general counsel POSTMASTER

Send address changes to: Rice University Development Services–MS 80 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892 EDITORIAL OFFICES

Creative Services–MS 95 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892 Phone: 713-348-6768 ricemagazine@rice.edu

IL LU S T R AT IO N B Y PA DDY MIL L S

ON BEGINNINGS WITH THE NEW YEAR in its infancy, there’s a hopeful spirit in the air. Hope shines forth in the triumph of scientific research, collaboration and discovery that have resulted in COVID-19 vaccines. Hope shines in the voices of activism and civic engagement among alumni and students. And what else but hope underlies the Rice community’s extraordinary efforts to learn, work, care for others and be together, however distant.

Our cover feature, “One for the Books,” began when art director Alese Pickering enlisted a group of talented student photographers to capture moments of their unique fall semester.

Here’s what caught the students’ attention: slices of life from real and virtual classrooms, ordinary spaces altered by COVID-19 rules and the joy of being outdoors. Staff photographers Tommy LaVergne and Jeff Fitlow contributed to this series as well, which continues online at magazine.rice.edu.

We owe Peter Fasullo ’75 a debt of gratitude for suggesting that we look into the groundbreaking work of his former suitemate, Barney Graham ’75, one of the key developers of the National Institutes of Health/Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. An email to Graham elicited the intriguing detail that another roommate, William C. Gruber ’75, was leading a vaccine project for Pfizer. Graham and Gruber’s enduring friendship and intertwining research careers are the subject of science writer Cindy George’s feature on solving the COVID-19 vaccine puzzle.

Last summer, we caught up with Mark Little ’08, whose unconventional

career path captured our attention.

Little earned a Ph.D. in geology and geophysics at Rice, but traded Earth science to work in support of strengthening the economic fabric of impoverished rural communities in his home state of North Carolina. N.C.-based journalist Elizabeth Leland paints a portrait of Little’s creative advocacy.

In Sallyport, we write about the on-campus protests, which began

It turns out that even beginnings are hard-won products of time and attention, collaboration and courage, and research and reckoning. In 2021, we raise a glass to the Owls who make new beginnings possible. last August, at the statue of William Marsh Rice. For almost a year, a group of students and alumni have called on the university to address “what is not told” about the founder’s history as a slave owner. In a related story, we learn about the current efforts of Rice’s Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice, which is headed by historians Caleb McDaniel and Alex Byrd ’90. The work of the task force has gained new visibility through a weekly webinar series called “Doc Talks” and a spin-off podcast by the same name.

It turns out that even beginnings are hard-won products of time and attention, collaboration and courage, and research and reckoning. In 2021, we raise a glass to the Owls who make new beginnings possible.

M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 15

PRESIDENT LEEBRON

OF CAPABILITIES AND POSSIBILITIES WHILE I WRITE this at a difficult and dangerous time with 17 million diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in the United States and over 300,000 deaths, we are beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel. A couple promising vaccines have been released, the first shipments have been made and doses administered. Sometime in the spring or early summer they should become generally available. There are obstacles, including the reluctance of many to take these vaccines, but it now seems likely that we will be able to be open for the next academic year in a more normal way.

For the last nine months, we have had to function in a completely different manner than we were accustomed to, and indeed largely dedicated to.

In the spring, our instruction went completely online and we closed down or severely limited much of the activity on our campus, including many research labs. This fall, after taking substantial precautions — including ultimately administering around 80,000 COVID-19 tests — we were able to offer dual-delivery or hybrid instruction, reopen labs and otherwise carry on much of our mission, but in a limited way. We hope that won’t be necessary next fall.

We should not assume, however, that our university will not have changed.

16 RICE M AG A ZINE W IN T ER 202 1

The result of the last nine months is that we have developed new capabilities on how to deliver education, create community and conduct research.

We have learned more about what works and what doesn’t, what students need and what they sometimes don’t.

Although levels of satisfaction with the teaching experience were relatively high, they weren’t equivalent to inperson classes. We have seen that our students very much want to be on our campus and want to be in classrooms with their teachers and fellow students.

And yet we also know that they appreciate the flexibility that multiple modes of delivery offer. We have made our education available to students around the world wherever they may be. We have increased the number of courses and degrees we offer remotely, and seen our summer enrollment burgeon as we moved online. We have allowed students to participate from afar even when a class is physically taking place on campus. We have created communities of students elsewhere by locating them together on a campus in China — at SUSTech in Shenzhen— or providing WeWork gathering spots for students somewhat more dispersed.

That has led us to explore how we might use such facilities around the world either to offer educational programs locally, enable more effective remote participation or support study abroad programs.

The potential benefits of using remote technologies aren’t limited to the classroom. Last spring at a meeting with students, as we were discussing measures we might take to address various challenges, one of the students asked, “You aren’t going to take away our ability to get student services by Zoom after the pandemic, are you?” In that moment, I realized that in some respect at least, we would never go back. Our students would expect us to offer services and education in ways that best fit their needs.

Our alumni, while also missing their opportunities to come to campus, have in some ways participated more than ever. Programs we have offered, including a number sponsored by the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice, have reached a much wider audience by being offered online.

Across the university, our schools have offered programs that have achieved high levels of engagement, and in the future, our alumni and others will no doubt expect such educational opportunities to be available to them.

One hundred and eight years ago, Rice began with a class of 59 students who gathered on our campus. Today, we have about 7,500 students enrolled, although many are now remote. But we also have over 100,000 new learners each month taking Rice courses online — some for credit, but most not.

We are inviting some online participants who aren’t Rice students into our classrooms. We are offering not only new online degree programs, but also smaller “slices” of education that could become part of a master’s degree program. The borders and limits that we are used to are receding as our choices in our educational programs are radically expanding. Edgar Odell Lovett’s guiding phrase of “no upper limits” has potential new meanings for us, while we also must remain aware of how these developments could disrupt our traditional ways of carrying out our missions.

The last nine months have been very hard. We have all missed the intimacy of our campus community and what it contributes to education, well-being and personal growth. We will always make that a part of the Rice experience.

But it is exciting to look ahead and contemplate how our new strengths will shape and influence our university as it continues to expand its horizons.

IL LU S T R AT IO N B Y PA DDY MIL L S

SALLYPORT

CAMPUS NEWS AND STUDENT LIFE

GRADUATE STUDENTS

Cycling for a Cure In just one month, Sudha Yellapantula went from being a reluctant cyclist to a champion cycling fundraiser for pediatric cancer research.

BY KATHARINE SHILCUTT

Adaptable

Just three weeks into the fall 2020 semester, we photographed 15 students and asked them about being optimistic in these unprecedented times.

SALLYPORT

STUDENT LIFE

BY ALESE PICKERING

PHOTOS BY TOMM Y L AV ERGNE

M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 17

SALLYPORT

Esha Ghai ’23, Martel College

Ariana Wang ’24, Brown College Quan Le ’23, Will Rice College

John Daniel ’23, Wiess College

Ava Paulina Fradlin Ryan ’24, Wiess College

Mingee Kim ’21, McMurtry College

Christian Metoyer ’22, Jones College

O

N SEPT. 16, 2020, WE set up camp near the Coffeehouse in the Ley Student Center and asked 15 random students if they would be willing to let photographer Tommy LaVergne take their portraits. While we had their attention, we asked the students to sum up their semester in one word, tell us whether they felt optimistic and let us know what they look forward to in 2021.

Words used to describe the semester included “adaptable,” “unpredictable,” “busy,” “positivity,” “heartening,” “unique,” “intriguing” and “growth.”

Most of the students we spoke with

18 RICE M AG A ZINE W IN T ER 202 1

James Jun-Gyu K. Hwang ’24, McMurtry College KC Nwadei ’21, Wiess College

Matthew Grabianski ’21, Martel College

Lavina Kalwani ’21, Lovett College

Cameron Underwood ’24, Duncan College

John Cook ’22, Will Rice College

were cautiously optimistic: “We won’t overcome COVID, but we will adjust,” said John Cook, a junior.

“I do feel optimistic, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty with how the pandemic is going. I trust how Rice is handling everything, but anything could happen,” said freshman Ariana Wang.

“I’m always hoping for the best because it brings a lot more peace than expecting the worst,” said senior KC Nwadei. Freshman Ava Paulina Fradlin Ryan said she is “definitely” optimistic and junior Asha Malani is hopeful that “Rice will do its best to ensure a fun and safe semester.” Sophomore John Daniel

Thomas Kovac ’23, Wiess College

Asha Malani ’23, Will Rice College

said, “I’m excited to tackle this year regardless of what issues are present and make new friendships along the way.” Thomas Kovac, a junior, feels that “even through these tough times there are still so many chances to broaden your horizons and take on new opportunities and challenges.”

Hopes for 2021 include “taking my mask off,” “graduating,” “getting into a new routine,” a “post-COVID college experience,” “giving hugs to my classmates,” “competing during track season,” “creating lasting memories with people I’ll never forget” and “everything — it’s a new year, so a new start!”

SALLYPORT CAMPUS NEWS

Renewing the Heart of Campus

RENDERINGS COURTESY OF ADJAYE ASSOCIATES

Prestigious architecture firm has the winning preliminary design of the new student center.

ADJAYE ASSOCIATES — an international architecture firm with offices in Accra, Ghana; London; and New York — has been selected to lead the design of Rice’s new student center, which will largely replace the Rice Memorial Center (RMC).

Best known for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, Adjaye Associates was one of three firms to present concepts remotely for the new RMC. “We could not be more delighted than to have a design architect of the

PHOTO CREDIT T K

standing of Sir David Adjaye and Adjaye Associates for Rice’s new student center,” said Rice President David Leebron. “Building on the insights of Rice graduates at his firm, Sir David’s competition submission reflected a deep understanding of the needs of our student community, including the need to support diversity and inclusion through a prominent Multicultural Center that is a central element of this project.”

The architect’s winning concept lays out a three-story, 80,000-squarefoot structure that incorporates the functions at the RMC, along with the Multicultural Center and a rooftop auditorium.

“We look forward to collaborating with Rice to imagine a new campus anchor point that engages its community in the most inclusive way possible,” Adjaye said. “Responding to the architectural

history of the university, the city of Houston and the region, the student center will come to embody its position at the heart of the campus, fostering catalytic connections between undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff.” Rice hopes to break ground on the project in the first quarter of 2022.

Current plans are for a few elements of the RMC — the chapel and the cloisters — to remain, while the majority of the RMC will be demolished to make way for the new facility, which should be completed by fall 2023. — MIKE WILLIAMS

M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 19

SALLYPORT

POLI 420 Election Systems DEPARTMENTS Political Science, Computer Science and Psychological Sciences DESCRIPTION Every two years since 2006, Dan Wallach, Michael Byrne and Robert Stein have combined their backgrounds in computer science, psychology and political science, respectively, to lead a class aimed at demystifying the mechanics of voting and elections in America.

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SYLLABUS

An Election Like No Other IN LAST FALL’S Election Systems course (cross-listed as COMP 435 and PSYC 420), the COVID-19 pandemic and the presidential election added new considerations, such as safety concerns and nationwide partisan division, to class discussions. “The 2020 election season provided a twist on material that we already know, but the dynamics of elections have not radically changed in the past year,” said Wallach, professor of computer science and electrical and computer engineering.

The lectures and discussions, all online, eventually culminated in a final group project, where the students

were able to explore any related topic of their choice. Valencia Shuler, a junior at Sid Richardson College, said her group researched the reasons for registration rejections, which was inspired by her own voting experience.

“I wasn’t a registered voter until now because my parents are in the military. We moved so many different times, so the question of my residency was always a challenge,” Shuler said.

“Every year at Rice, I always tried to register to vote, and I always got rejected — until this year.”

Mason Reece came into the class with a unique background; he’s a student election

judge for Precinct 361. Reece, a junior at Hanszen College, said he values the psychological and technical aspects of voting systems, something he learned more about through this multidisciplinary course.

“Each discussion is more of an introduction and a springboard for future research, to entice us rather than to overwhelm us with technical jargon,” Reece said.

An interdisciplinary approach to teaching about elections is actually rare across universities, according to Wallach, but he said it’s something invaluable not only to the students, but to the instructors as well.

— SAVANNAH KUCHAR ’22

IL LU S T R AT IO N B Y A L E X EB EN ME Y ER

SALLYPORT

SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Statue Dilemma Students are leading a daily protest at the founder’s statue.

EVERY DAY AT 6 P.M. since Aug. 31, Shifa Rahman ’22 and classmates have gathered in the Academic Quad to call for the removal of the founder’s statue.

Participants sit near the plinth that bears the bronze statue of William Marsh Rice, silently holding up signs such as “Down With Willy” for passersby to see.

Rahman, who came up with the idea as a way to continue the statue protests that started in summer 2020, said, “I didn’t start sitting in because I had a problem with the statue; I started because we had a problem with the statue.” The sit-ins complement a social media campaign that called attention to the way the statue has been cast in university history and marketing. In June, removing the statue from the Academic Quad was a key action item on a list of demands made by Black students to the Rice administration and the focus of a petition started by Gabrielle Falcon ’20.

“During tours of campus, tour guides are instructed to tell the well-known story of Rice’s mystery-book death and how his lawyer friend helped to solve his murder,” Falcon wrote. “What is not told or acknowledged is Rice’s history as a racist enslaver who owned 15 slaves.

What is not told is that the money that was used to found Rice University came from wealth earned by Rice’s cotton trading. What is not told is that he served on a slave patrol (aka a slave catcher).”

On the last day of fall semester classes, students again gathered by the statue, displaying hand-painted signs with the names of the 15 individuals

PHOTOS BY JEF F F I T LOW

enslaved by William Marsh Rice.

“Making a move like removing the statue would show Rice’s dedication to Black students’ lives here on campus,” said Angelica Torres ’22.

The protests are a key part of ongoing conversations within Rice’s administrative, campus and alumni communities to examine the university’s past with respect to slavery, segregation and racial injustice. Via historical research, webinars and online group discussions, this process is available to follow at taskforce.rice.edu.

— SAVANNAH KUCHAR ’22

M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 21

SALLYPORT

WORTH WATCHING

Georgiev recommends ...

“THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED” (1926), written and directed

by Lotte Reiniger

“Reiniger makes these beautiful, very elaborate papercut animations with multiple layers. They’re very old and just amazing. This is thought to be the oldest surviving animated film.”

I’M A NERD ABOUT ...

Film

From deep cuts to digitizing, Konstantin Georgiev raises the reels on loving movies.

FOR THE PAST three years, Konstantin Georgiev has worked as a film archivist at Rice Cinema, where he has learned to repair, preserve and digitize analog films — reels, slides and rolls of film used to create movies during the 20th century before the advent of digital technology.

Before coming to Rice to begin his doctoral studies in anthropology, however,

Georgiev was already a passionate film buff. “I have this passion for movies that I can’t watch on Netflix, Amazon or at a normal cinema,” Georgiev said, “but rather have to hunt down and watch under irregular circumstances.”

In 2016, Georgiev began working with a film company in his home country of Bulgaria, which gave him access to countless experimental and historical films.

“I’m interested in weird, unexpected movies, but I’m also drawn to the material aspect of film,” Georgiev said. “Analog film can have such random results and contain so many surprising things. There’s only so much about it that you can control, and that makes engaging with this media we often take for granted fun in a

22 RICE M AG A ZINE W IN T ER 202 1

whole new way.”

Wanting to continue working with the material aspect of film during his graduate studies, Georgiev applied for a job at Rice Cinema under VADA lecturer and film curator Tish Stringer ’06. “I had no idea how to clean or inspect film, but I knew I could learn,” Georgiev said. He then began working in the Rice Media Center’s film archives, where he also helps organize events such as Low-Fi, a weekly series that screens “analog deep cuts from the cinema archive.”

“Once you start finding this stuff and learning the stories around these films and how they’re made, it makes no sense to keep them secret. I love sharing films, and that’s what Low-Fi is all about.” — MARIANA NÁJERA ’21

“THE MOSQUITO PROBLEM AND OTHER STORIES” (2007), directed by Andrey Paounov and written by Lilia Topouzova

“This is a Bulgarian film, and it’s the first documentary that I saw and loved so much that I had to watch it again and again.

I even began working with the filmmakers in 2016 because I loved their films so much.”

“LA JETÉE” (1962), written and directed

by Chris Marker

“This is a film that many times in my life I have wanted to imitate and make my own version of just for fun. It’s an artsy sci-fi film made out of still photography that was also the inspiration for ‘12 Monkeys’ with Bruce Willis.”

Visit vada.rice.edu/rice-cinema for more information about the Rice Cinema archive and to see what films Low-Fi is screening next.

PHOTO BY JEFF FITLOW

INNOVATION IN THE LAB, THE FIELD AND THE CLASSROOM

WISDOM IMAGES COURTESY OF PATRICK HARTIGAN/RICE UNIVERSITY

ASTRONOMY

Carina Close-Up

A blur-correcting camera lets Gemini South telescope take crystal-clear images of star-forming nebula.

BY JADE BOYD

M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 2 3

WISDOM

A

N ADAPTIVE OPTICS camera at the Gemini South telescope in Chile has provided astronomers with images as clear as those taken from a telescope in orbit.

The camera corrects for distortion from Earth’s atmosphere and allowed Rice’s Patrick Hartigan and Andrea Isella and Dublin City University’s Turlough Downes to capture nearinfrared images of the Carina Nebula with the same resolution that’s expected of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is slated to launch in late 2021.

Hartigan, Isella and Downes described their work in a study published online last fall in Astrophysical Journal Letters. It took about 10 hours to gather the wide-field images from the 8.1-meter telescope in January 2018.

The work at the international Gemini Observatory, a program of the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, provided the clearest view yet of a stellar

ADAPTIVE OPTICS

“The new images of it are so much sharper than anything we’ve previously seen.

They provide the clearest view to date of how massive young stars affect their surroundings and influence star and planet formation.” nursery where new stars are forming about 7,500 light years from Earth.

“The results are stunning,” Hartigan said. The Carina images show a molecular cloud of dust and gas known as the Western Wall. All stars, including Earth’s sun, are thought to form within molecular clouds.

The cloud’s surface is slowly evaporating in the intense glow of radiation from a nearby cluster of massive young stars. The radiation causes hydrogen to glow with near-infrared light, and specially designed filters allowed the astronomers to capture separate images of hydrogen at the cloud’s surface and hydrogen that was evaporating.

An additional filter captured starlight reflected from dust.

Combining the images allowed the trio to visualize how the cloud and cluster are interacting. Hartigan has previously observed the Western Wall with other NOIRLab telescopes. “The new images of it are so much sharper than anything we’ve previously seen,” he said. “They provide the clearest view to date of how massive young stars affect their surroundings and influence star and planet formation.”

Images of star-forming regions taken from Earth are usually blurred by atmospheric turbulence. Placing telescopes in orbit eliminates that problem, and so does adaptive optics, which uses “a mirror that changes its shape to correct for shimmering in our atmosphere,” Hartigan said. The result: photos with roughly 10 times the resolution of images taken from ground-based telescopes that don’t use adaptive optics.

But the atmosphere also blocks some near-infrared light. Hartigan said those wavelengths will only be visible from a space telescope like the Webb.

“Structures like the Western Wall are going to be rich hunting grounds for both Webb and ground-based telescopes with adaptive optics like Gemini South,” Hartigan said. “Each will pierce the dust shrouds and reveal new information about the birth of stars.”

Patrick Hartigan is a professor of physics and astronomy, and Andrea Isella is an associate professor of physics and astronomy and of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Rice. Turlough Downes is a professor of mathematics and astrophysics at Dublin City University. The research was supported by Rice University.

NO ADAPTIVE OPTICS 24 RICE M AG A ZINE W IN T ER 202 1

WISDOM

of technology in health care and the implications of how we visually represent health, illness and disease.

The Humanities of Health I do research on health and medical media from around the late 19th century, when film was invented, to the present, where my focus is now on mobile media, the data networks that are associated with them and their related issues.

UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM

The Medical Media Analyst Kirsten Ostherr in her own words INTERVIEW BY MARIANA NÁJERA ’21

A

S THE GLADYS LOUISE FOX PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, Kirsten Ostherr works at the intersection of media, health and technology. She is also the chair of Rice’s English department and the founder and director of the Medical Humanities program and the Medical Futures Lab, a collaborative center bringing together faculty from Rice, Baylor College of Medicine and UT Health to study new ways of understanding medicine. Under Ostherr’s leadership, enrollment for the program has skyrocketed, with the introductory course expanding from 25 students to 60 this past term. Since joining the department in 2002, Ostherr has worked with countless students, faculty and medical professionals to question the role

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How I Got Started When I was working as a research assistant at a medical school in Oregon, I was really fascinated by the ways that epidemiologists told stories to make sense of data that they gathered. This brought my attention to the fact that narratives are really important in health and medicine, both in research and in the ways that people make sense of things. So I started wondering, what are the visual dimensions of the ways that we represent contagious disease? And how have they changed over time?

From X-Rays to “Grey’s Anatomy” My general focus is understanding how visual media shapes the ways that doctors and patients see and understand health and disease.

That includes media created inside of clinical settings, like X-rays and CT scans, as well as media produced outside of clinical settings, like drug ads or TV shows.

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WISDOM

Teaching With Television One of the things we do in my Medicine and Media class is we talk about “Grey’s Anatomy.” A number of years ago, I happened to meet someone who was the director of medical research for the show, and then she also became a writer, screenwriter and producer.

I invited her to come speak to the class, and it’s become an annual tradition where she will Skype in and give a presentation on the relationship between accuracy and storytelling on that show.

It raises a lot of interesting questions for the class. … So we talk about how to balance entertainment and education, because entertainment media has often been used effectively as a form of health communication, even when it’s totally fictional.

Healing Through a Screen My research and teaching also involve questioning the use of technology in health care practices, a topic that is particularly relevant right now because of the pandemic. How do we experience human presence through a screen? What are the strengths of technologically mediated communication in health care? What are the limitations and meaning, and what are the parts of health care that really need human connection? These are huge questions that no one has the answer to, but ever since computers became a part of health care, people have been asking what this means for human doctors.

We talk about how to balance entertainment and education, because entertainment media has often been used effectively as a form of health communication, even when it’s totally fictional.

Why Medical Humanities?

Most of what we teach premed and medical students is not about the human dimensions of caring for other people. Medical education often doesn’t take into account the ways that things like race, gender, sexual identity and religion shape not only how we approach care, but also how we even define health and illness. Most of what is traditionally taught is also not about listening, nor making space for hearing parts of a patient’s story that may not be understood purely in terms of diagnosis, but are vital for proper treatment.

There are so many dimensions of medicine that just go way beyond the biomedical understanding of disease.

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Better Patient Communication I know that most doctors agree with this too, because anyone who’s practiced medicine knows that there’s a lot more gray than there is black and white.

And that means you need to be a critical thinker who can communicate ambiguity in a compassionate and empathetic way that helps patients, but still be honest about uncertainty. It’s also a research-based skill that will, like studying organic chemistry, actually increase their knowledge as doctors.

From that perspective, I think it’s hugely important for doctors to come out of training with skills that include medical humanities.

Solving Human Problems I teach students about the complexity of health care, but also how to identify problems and then address them.

Ultimately, what students get out of this is the sense of how to confront complex problems that may at first seem too difficult to take on.

But really importantly, the tools I’m teaching students to use are not engineering tools. These solutions are not a technological fix; rather, it’s actually about using the methods of the humanities to intervene in health problems, based on the realization that many health problems are actually information and communication problems.

So it’s a way of using things like understanding the importance of perspective or cultural context or the power of storyboards and literature, for example, as research tools to understand problems and then imagine alternatives and solutions.

Care and Health Care When people have some kind of health crisis, trusting their doctor is essential.

It can mean the difference of feeling like you had a good outcome, even if the disease is not cured. It’s fundamental for future doctors to be able to recognize the contribution that learning humanistic perspectives will bring to their success as doctors and to their ability to have good outcomes with patients, as well as their satisfaction with their work.

Read an extended version of this interview at magazine.rice.edu.

WISDOM COVID-19

Safety Onstage

A study of exhaled aerosols points to the importance of ventilation for performance artists.

KEEPING MUSICIANS SAFE while they’re onstage during the pandemic may require more than just social distancing, according to a study of exhaled aerosols conducted by Rice engineers and musicians from the Shepherd School of Music and the Houston Symphony.

In August, engineers from the lab of Ashok Veeraraghavan used a high-speed camera and computational imaging to track the movements of exhaled air released by singers and musicians who play wind instruments. The experiments showed that much of the air exhaled by performers, even those playing instruments, tended to rise toward the ceiling and join air currents created by the room’s air-conditioning vents.

With musical organizations around the world making plans for seasonal performances, Veeraraghavan and the study’s other principal investigators, Shepherd School Dean Robert Yekovich and Houston Symphony CEO John Mangum, moved quickly to analyze the data and publish their findings, recommendations and source data online in advance of peer review. Yekovich said it was “imperative to make others aware of what we found.” The research was funded by a grant from Rice’s COVID-19 Research Fund, and Veeraraghavan said the hypothesis going into the study was that exhaled airflow in front of singers and instruments would be the critical factor for determining social distancing guidelines.

Using a form of schlieren imaging, a decades-old technique for filming airflow, postdoctoral research associate Vivek Boominathan ’19 and others from Veeraraghavan’s lab filmed performers playing the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trombone, trumpet and tuba, as well as a female and male singer. Using a combination of cameras, a specially printed high-resolution background and computational algorithms, Veeraraghavan’s team was able to visualize the direction and flow of exhaled air coming from the musicians’ instruments and mouths.

The video showed that exhaled air, which was warmer than room air, rose quickly. Veeraraghavan said the finding points to the importance of ventilation and the need for a tailored approach for keeping audiences and performers safe at specific musical venues. “Our main message is that there is no single silver bullet,” he said. “Performance venues are going to need a mix of several different risk mitigation strategies. Each of them will help a little, and the sum total of all of them will minimize risk to both the performers and the audience.”

The researchers recommended several strategies, including social distancing, wearing of masks and ensuring that ventilation systems meet or exceed federal standards. To see their full recommendations, analysis and data, visit tunesflow.rice.edu.

— JADE BOYD

PHOTO BY JEF F F I T LOW

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ARCHIVES

Talking History

New podcast sheds light on research and the behind-the-scenes work of Rice historians.

SOME OF THE MOST VISIBLE work done by Rice’s Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice since its formation in June 2019 is a new podcast, which illuminates work that’s often far less visible: the behind-the-scenes research performed by historians such as

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Alex Byrd ’90 and Caleb McDaniel.

The two professors are not only cochairs of the task force, they’re also the hosts of a weekly webinar and podcast called “Doc Talks.” Both formats spotlight an ongoing research project that aims to discover, document and disseminate Rice’s past with respect to slavery, segregation and racial injustice.

Each Friday at noon during the fall semester, Byrd and McDaniel convened via Zoom to discuss documents — “Doc Talks” refers to both the presenters and what they present — found in the process of research done, for example, by students in courses like McDaniel’s Rice, Slavery and Segregation. The course, the webinars and the podcast are just a few of many ongoing efforts by the task force to involve the entire Rice community in its findings.

“We wanted from the beginning to release the ‘Doc Talks’ as podcast episodes, because we realized that not everyone would be able to attend the live recordings,” McDaniel said.

Documents examined each week include everything from the iconic photograph of Jacqueline McCauley ’70, the first Black female undergrad at Rice, to a letter from Houston philanthropist Joseph Cullinan withdrawing his financial support from Rice over concerns about the presence of the Ku Klux Klan on campus.

A student research showcase episode brought together undergraduates and alumni to discuss a touching application essay written in flowing cursive

by Rice’s first Black female graduate, Linda Faye Williams ’70, as well as a record of a transaction of $1,450 for “Negro property” in one of William Marsh Rice’s business ledgers from 1859. The latter, buried under 787 pages of other business recordings in that year alone, represents the intense sifting historians must do to find valuable nuggets amid the silt.

The podcast version of “Doc Talks” provides an even deeper dive into questions raised by the week’s research topic, with Byrd and McDaniel recording an addendum to each episode alongside producer Kate Coley ’11, associate director of alumni programs.

“Doc Talks” will continue into the spring semester, providing even more fodder for the podcasts and more opportunities for students and professors alike to present their research.

“These talks are an opportunity to inform the Rice community about the work of the task force, but they are also a chance to show our audience how historians work, how we approach documents, what kinds of questions we wrestle with in our discipline,” McDaniel said.

— KATHARINE SHILCUTT

To listen to episodes of Rice’s “Doc Talks” podcast and view the documents discussed, visit taskforce.rice.edu/doctalks/podcasts.

WISDOM COVID-19

Testing the Water

Houston’s wastewater treatment plants have emerged as a key source of data about the spread of COVID-19.

RICE ENGINEERS and statisticians have worked for months to help the city of Houston monitor the spread of COVID-19 through traces of the coronavirus found in wastewater treatment plants.

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Because the virus responsible for the disease can be found in stool regardless of an infected person’s symptoms, treatment plants offer a reliable source of data about how it has moved throughout the city. Beginning last summer and working with the Houston Health Department and Baylor College of Medicine, Rice experts helped track disease dynamics in close to real time by monitoring the city’s 39 wastewater treatment plants, which serve 2.1 million people spread over 670 square miles.

The team collects samples from each plant every Tuesday for rapid analysis at Rice and Baylor. Project lead Lauren Stadler, a Rice assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, said

having so many plants to draw upon “allows us to identify specific areas that are experiencing a higher burden of infection and areas that may be experiencing rapid community spread.”

It gives the city what amounts to an early warning system that allows the health department to identify problem areas and institute measures including increased testing and outreach and education to slow the spread.

As infections spiked across the nation last fall, the department expanded testing to cover 60 schools in high positive-rate areas and 15 nursing homes. “Wastewater levels increased slightly (in late October), which is consistent with our findings that wastewater leads positivity rates by about two weeks,” Stadler said.

“Tracking the virus in wastewater provides an unbiased estimate of the extent of the virus compared with relying solely on clinical testing,” said Loren Hopkins ’89, the Houston Health Department’s chief environmental science officer and a professor in the practice of statistics at Rice. “The hope is to continue using this method to help inform public health decisions regarding interventions to control the virus.”

Hopkins pitched the project in early 2020, acquiring seed funding from the Rice COVID-19 Research Fund and additional funding from the city.

The strategy is a viable way to essentially test an entire community at once, said Katherine Ensor, the Noah G. Harding Professor of Statistics, whose team built the statistical models that draw a comprehensive picture of viral trends in Greater Houston. “The wastewater gives us a more complete picture than testing because it accounts for everyone, not just people who get tested,” Ensor said.

Stadler said several other American cities are mounting similar programs, but Houston is unique for its large number of plants, which helps pinpoint outbreaks. “I think we’re pretty far ahead of the curve,” she said. “Not too many cities have the complexity we have.”

— MIKE WILLIAMS

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WISDOM FACULTY BOOKS

Now Reading

BY JENNIFER LATSON

Memorial

Bryan Washington Riverhead Books, 2020

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T 27, BRYAN Washington has been called a lit world wunderkind. His debut short story collection, “Lot,” came out in 2019 to rave reviews and was included on two highly esteemed lists of the year’s top books: The New York Times Book Review and Barack Obama’s “Favorite Books of the Year.” He’s also the first scholarin-residence for racial justice at Rice, where he teaches creative writing, including a course titled Writing Black Lives. He recently worked with Rice’s Center for African and African American Studies as it launched a new undergraduate minor and graduate certificate, and he’s working with Rice’s Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice to create campus events focused on racial justice.

His new novel, “Memorial,” is already a bestseller; it was optioned for TV before it even hit bookshelves.

Washington has described it as a “gay slacker dramedy” — but it’s much more than that. Among other things, it’s also an adroit portrait of life in Houston and an incisive commentary on race in America. The novel follows Benson, a Black daycare teacher who is ambivalent about children, and his boyfriend, Mike, a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant, as their relationships with each other and with their families are tested.

Benson and Mike live in Houston’s historically Black Third Ward, where Benson notes the neighborhood’s gentrification in the form of “pockets of rich kids playing at poverty.” “The Black folks who’ve lived here for decades let them do it, happy for the

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scientific fact that white kids keep the cops away,” Benson observes wryly.

Washington is writing what he knows; he used to live in the Third Ward. So did George Floyd, the Black man who was killed by police in Minneapolis last May, sparking nationwide protests against systemic racism and police violence. Washington wrote about one for The New Yorker — a march for justice in Houston that he joined with Floyd’s family. “The diversity of the marchers can’t be overstated: from the midst of the crowd, it was easy to see why Houston is routinely referred to as the most diverse city in the country,” Washington writes.

That doesn’t make it the most tolerant,

however, or the safest. In another essay for The New Yorker, Washington wrote about his own experience as a Black man living in Houston: “We have to go about our lives; at the same time, there is this thing right here, which is to say everywhere in this country, that might end it at any time. … We still go out and about only to find ourselves misidentified, owing to an administrative error in an office somewhere, and we might be shot and killed for that. We still go for walks in the neighborhood, and we might be shot and killed for that. We still take naps at home, and we might be shot and killed for that. We can be killed for any of these things — or anything else, really — with total impunity for the killers.”

WISDOM

Teams That Work

The Seven Drivers of Team Effectiveness Scott Tannenbaum and Eduardo Salas Oxford University Press, 2021

Why Science and Faith Need Each Other Eight Shared Values That Move Us Beyond Fear Elaine Howard Ecklund Brazos Press, 2020

AT A TIME WHEN AMERICA is more polarized than ever before, Elaine Howard Ecklund’s new book seeks to build a bridge between two communities that seemingly occupy opposite ends of a spectrum: scientists and people of faith. Ecklund, a sociology professor at Rice, argues that these groups have more in common than they might realize.

“Why Science and Faith Need Each Other” is rooted in Ecklund’s years of social science research and more than 1,200 interviews with Christians and scientists who’ve shared their experiences of integrating science and faith. The book documents the values both groups hold dear, including curiosity, creativity, doubt, humility, healing, awe, gratitude and “shalom,” which Ecklund describes as “the peace, harmony, well-being and prosperity that result from the flourishing of all creation.” Weaving in anecdotes from her own life, Ecklund illustrates how fear can masquerade as anger and create groundless conflict that could be mitigated by understanding. It’s a lesson that applies to countless other groups whose irrational fear of each other has transformed into hostility.

WORKING TOGETHER AS A TEAM can be a struggle in the best of times — and the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a whole new set of challenges. In “Teams That Work,” Rice psychology professor Eduardo Salas and Scott Tannenbaum, president of the Group for Organizational Effectiveness, tap a growing body of academic research on effective teamwork and distill it into practical advice for team leaders and team members alike.

Using examples that span a variety of industries — from the corporate world to sports, the military and even NASA, where they’ve conducted research to help assemble crews who will be good teammates on a long space mission — Salas and Tannenbaum debunk myths about teamwork and offer evidence-based insights into how teams work best.

As they point out, the stakes are high for employees and managers, since teamwork is becoming more pervasive as organizations become flatter with fewer layers of management. And teams that are unable to overcome adversity, that burn out their team members, or that lack the vitality to adapt and innovate can do real harm to the individuals who serve on them and the organizations who rely on them.

The Latin American Ecocultural Reader

Edited by Jennifer French and Gisela Heffes Northwestern University Press, 2021

IF YOU’RE NOT FAMILIAR WITH ecocriticism, now is the time to learn more about it, say Gisela Heffes, an associate professor of Latin American literature and culture at Rice, and Jennifer French, a Spanish professor at Williams College.

The study of the relationship between literature, culture and the environment, ecocriticism is closely connected to the environmental justice movement, which “affirms the right of all persons to share equally the benefits of a healthy environment,” Heffes and French write in “The Latin American Ecocultural Reader.” And that’s an especially crucial mission right now. “As we write these words, the news reports are filled each week with stories of floods, droughts, hurricanes, pandemic and wildfires, all triggered or exacerbated by the effects of anthropogenic climate change,” they observe in the introduction to the book, an anthology of texts about the natural world from Latin America.

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S O LV I N G TH E VAC C I N E PUZZLE Former roommates and careerlong colleagues Barney Graham and Bill Gruber have been instrumental in the development of vaccines for respiratory diseases and HIV. Today, they’re at the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic — working to piece together lifesaving vaccines in record time.

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Bill Gruber and Barney Graham pictured in the 1973 “Campanile.”

BARNE Y S . G R AHAM AND WILLIAM C . “ B ILL” G R UB ER MET IN 19 7 1 A S RICE F RE SHMEN .

G R AHAM , A FARM B OY F ROM K AN SA S , AND G R UB ER , F ROM WHAT WA S THEN THE OUT SKIR T S OF HOUS T ON , B EC AME P ODMATE S AND FA S T F RIENDS IN WILL RICE C OLLEG E B EF ORE G R ADUATING IN 19 7 5 .

Over the next half-century, both earned medical degrees and became physician-researchers focused on infectious diseases with careers that tracked with science and serendipity. Despite decades as emblems of excellence — working in elite arenas on difficult problems — both now find themselves sharing what may be the most urgent challenge of their professional lives: COVID-19, the global public health crisis.

Having enjoyed a five-decade friendship of mutual admiration, they now are also colleague competitors. Graham, from his lab at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Gruber, as a global executive for the pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer, are at the forefront of the race for a vaccine to control SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. “We’re solving for a pandemic

situation,” Gruber said. “We’re talking about condensing a process that typically takes sometimes a decade into months.”

They share the weight of an awesome responsibility. SARS-CoV-2, which emerged in late 2019, has now claimed the lives of at least 355,000 people in the United States and over 1.8 million worldwide while sickening millions more.

At the time of this story, Graham’s NIH vaccine with manufacturer Moderna and Gruber’s Pfizer vaccine in partnership with the German biotechnology company BioNTech were competing to be the first to market. In November, each company released preliminary data suggesting that its vaccine was more than 90% effective in Phase 3 clinical trials. By mid-December, both vaccines had received emergency use authorization from the FDA. That placed the pandemic’s end on an emptying hourglass.

“Even though Moderna started first on March 16, we were just getting to Phase 3 July 27,” Graham said in a joint conversation with Gruber. “I just want to remind Bill that Pfizer also started Phase 3 July 27, but we started in the morning and they started in the afternoon.”

Gruber shot back with a chuckle. “There’s still a little competitive spirit here,” he said.

to college. I just really wanted to go to a relatively small school in a warm climate,” said Graham, who came from the tiny town of Paola, Kansas. When his admissions interviewer asked what books he’d read the previous summer, Graham said none, explaining that he’d built a barn with his brother and managed a farm with pigs, cows and horses.

“I was pretty far behind my whole freshman year, and if it wasn’t for Bill, I probably wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now,” said Graham, whose deep voice has a deliberative pace. “I saw how Bill worked and how he studied, and I saw what was possible, so I really just buckled down. After that first semester, I think I almost got all A’s, but it was because I was trying to catch up with Bill.”

Gruber grew up in Houston’s Spring Branch area. Well-prepared for the rigor of college, he had applied to several schools. “In the end, Rice was just the thing that was going to work out best for me,” he said. After graduation, Graham went to medical school at Kansas University, his parents’ alma mater, while Gruber headed across the street from Rice to Baylor College of Medicine. Graham became an internist while Gruber chose pediatrics. But each — unbeknownst to the other — became intensely focused on infectious disease research.

AC A D E MI C O R I G IN S

C A R E E R C O LLI S I O N S

According to Graham, he and Gruber began as undergrads on dissimilar academic footing.

“I got into Rice early decision during my junior year of high school. It was the only place I ever applied

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In 1986, they bumped into each other at a conference. Their science posters ended up being displayed side by side. Graham was at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and Gruber was working at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital.

“We just couldn’t believe it. We were both working in the same field, in the same area of interest in terms of a respiratory pathogen, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that affects children and adults,” said Gruber, who speeds through his sentences like a sprinter. RSV is the single most important cause of pediatric hospitalization in the U.S., with 40,000–120,000 infant hospitalizations each year.

It is a major reason for infant morbidity and mortality throughout the world.

“Barney was telling everyone about all the cool stuff happening in Nashville, and I developed a great deal of envy. … I actually got back to my office and was kind of lamenting. And literally, on the top of my stack of mail that had gathered while Gruber I was gone was a solicitation for the posi(top left), tion that Barney was talking about with the Graham pediatric infectious disease group. And so, (top center) I applied. Lucky for me, they accepted me.” and friends Over the next decade, Graham and pictured Gruber authored a few papers together at in the 1974 “Campanile.”

Vanderbilt on RSV, but in 1999, Gruber left

for a job in industry.

“He went to Wyeth on the premise that he was going to go to a place where he could actually make antiviral vaccines that could be used in somebody’s arm and really get out there and make a difference,” Graham said. “I was pretty much doing mouse experiments, trying to understand the immunology of RSV and mostly T-cell biology and things that were not really of a lot of interest to industry. But, Bill, you know, he wanted to turn his virology and vaccinology expertise into something practical, to actually make products.”

“Even though Moderna started first on March 16, we were just getting to Phase 3 July 27,” Graham said in a joint conversation with Gruber.

“I just want to remind Bill that Pfizer also started Phase 3 July 27, but we started in the morning and they started in the afternoon.”

In 2000, Graham, who by then had earned his Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology, left Vanderbilt to join the NIH. He was recruited to help develop an HIV vaccine clinic and work in a new vaccine research center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), led then and now by the famed infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci.

F U NDA ME NTA L B R E A K THR O U G H The foundational work of Graham and collaborators on RSV set a new course for vaccine development by decoding the structure of the “prefusion” F protein, which controls the entry of a virus into a host cell. The most potent neutralizing antibodies attach to the prefusion F, which shape shifts into a “postfusion” form after pulling the virus and host

membranes together to infect the cell.

“Finding that shape and conformation of the protein before it rearranges turned out to be more important than just getting the structure,” Graham said. Gruber said not knowing enough about the prefusion structure contributed to the difficulty in developing vaccines, as did preventing the F protein’s postfusion form, which is less immunogenic and less likely to produce a good antibody response.

“That work was fundamental,” Gruber said.

The breakthrough was published in 2013.

Graham was eager to discuss the advancement with Gruber at a scientific meeting that October. Then, the federal government shut down. Unable to travel for work, Graham and his wife decided to leave their Maryland home and take a road trip.

“I’ve never seen the leaves in the northeastern part of the country during October,” Graham said, adding that he could skip the chaos of a conference and spend time talking to his old friend. The Grahams stopped to see friends in Philadelphia, New York City, New Hampshire and, specifically, Gruber and his wife in Warwick, New York. After pleasantries and a Mediterranean meal, the vaccine scientists retreated to Gruber’s study.

“The time with Bill was special because there’s not three people on Earth who really want to talk about the F protein of RSV,” Graham said. “I think it’s very exciting and it just isn’t something you can talk about with everybody.”

Soon after, Gruber, who had joined Pfizer when the company bought Wyeth in 2009, took a team Gruber (far left), Graham (far right) and friends pictured in the 1974 “Campanile.”

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to meet with Graham and his group to set up a license agreement to acquire the stabilized form of the F protein. Pfizer scientists further stabilized the structure to create a new vaccine for pregnant women to protect their babies from RSV that has reached Phase 3 clinical trials.

C OV ID -19 E ME R G E S Graham’s RSV work became the gateway to understanding coronaviruses such as MERS-CoV, which

“We need more than one company to be successful, because I think no single company is going to be able to produce vaccine doses as fast as needed to quell the epidemic,” said Gruber, who is now senior vice president of Pfizer Vaccine Clinical Research and Development, responsible for the company’s global clinical development of vaccines.

causes the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome first identified in 2012, and led his lab to work with messenger RNA (mRNA) company Moderna on a potential vaccine for that virus and anything new.

“We were partnering with them because that manufacturing technology is fast, and we had a protein design that we thought could work, so if there was a new coronavirus Graham outbreak, we would be ready to jump on (in the plaid that, which we did,” said Graham, who is pants) and now deputy director of NIAID’s Dale and Gruber Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center (behind him) and chief of the institute’s Viral Pathoat their 1975 genesis Laboratory. commencement Because Pfizer was already working ceremony. with mRNA company BioNTech on an 38 RICE M AG A ZINE W IN T ER 202 1

influenza vaccine, they too were ready to fast-track development of an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine.

Before this year, no mRNA vaccines for infectious disease had been approved for human use, which makes first-to-market COVID-19 vaccines using this technology a dual breakthrough.

In November, The Atlantic’s Sarah Zhang described the “triumphant” accomplishment this way: “If mRNA vaccines help end the pandemic and restore normal life, they may also usher in a new era for vaccine development.”

Relying on mRNA technology, the PfizerBioNTech and Moderna-NIH COVID-19 vaccines under development now hold promise for safe administration, rapid production and low manufacturing costs. Unlike traditional vaccines, those produced with mRNA don’t require injecting a virus into the patient to produce antibodies. Instead, mRNA molecules trick the cells into making proteins and reproducing antibodies with no virus present — and with the immune system reacting in an authentic way.

“They started manufacturing based on the sequence we thought would produce a stabilized spike protein using their mRNA delivery almost immediately — within three days of Jan. 10, when the [SARS-CoV-2] coronavirus sequence was released,” Graham said. “And so, we got off to a very

quick start, and that’s why we had the first Phase 1 clinical trial that opened up March 16.”

Vaccine scientist Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, said vaccines are “our most effective lifesaving interventions” and heaped praise on both Graham and Gruber. “Both of these individuals have made monumental contributions to vaccine science, and the hope is that their work will lead to new innovations not only for COVID-19, but for a variety of different virus vaccines,” he said.

Hotez, a fellow in disease and poverty at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy who also serves as a Rice adjunct professor in biomedical engineering, noted Graham as a “pioneer in viral immunology and vaccine development.”

A VAC C INE R AC E The COVID-19 puzzle has been “all-consuming” since Jan. 7, 2020, Graham said, when a prototype for a pandemic preparedness demonstration project turned into real life. Graham and Gruber, both 67, said they have never worked so hard. The PfizerBioNTech and Moderna-NIH formulations are twodose vaccines. Hundreds of millions of doses will be needed immediately — and, eventually, billions.

“We need more than one company to be successful, because I think no single company is going to be able to produce vaccine doses as fast as needed to quell the epidemic,” said Gruber, who is now senior vice president of Pfizer Vaccine Clinical Research and Development, responsible for the company’s global clinical development of vaccines.

Many challenges remain — in supply chain, cold storage, access for low-wealth countries and public trust — for uptake of the vaccine.

“The Pfizer vaccine is going to have to be kept frozen — at least for transport for any sort of extended period of time. It can be kept in the refrigerator for several days after it’s thawed,” Gruber said. Graham said the Moderna product has to be frozen as well, but can remain at room temperature for 30 days after being thawed.

Both companies will be seeking more stable formulations for use in low-income and middleincome countries. There’s no guarantee that whatever vaccinations are produced will provide durable protection for years to come; they may have to be updated and administered annually like flu inoculations.

“We’ll eventually convert this to an endemic disease that doesn’t have the impact it has now.

That’s the goal,” Gruber said. “We need more than

Graham (top) and Gruber pictured in their home offices in November.

two vaccines to be successful here because we’ve got a lot of people to vaccinate.”

Despite the whirlwind they endured in 2020, both scientists feel grateful to have the knowledge, experience and energy to face the challenge.

“When this first happened, I considered myself among the fortunate few in that I can actually try to do something about this, as opposed to sort of waiting and hoping that something happens. That, in many ways, is empowering,” Gruber said. “I’m hopeful that we can convey some sense of reassurance for the public that, yes, something is coming.

Help is coming.” ◆

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IN NORTH CAROLINA, MARK LITTLE LEADS A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH TO RURAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT THAT BUILDS ON COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIPS TO CREATE AND SUSTAIN JOB GROWTH.

THE CHANGEMAKER

BY ELIZABETH LELAND PHOTOS BY DARE KUMOLU-JOHNSON

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M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 41

fter a day spent drilling for soil samples on the slope of Mount Meru, a dormant volcano in Tanzania, Rice professor Cin-Ty Lee heard a soulful tune drifting across the tropical African air. His graduate student, Mark Little ’08, had pulled out his alto saxophone and begun to play.

For Lee, now chair of the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, that memory captures Little’s eclectic spirit. Geologist and musician. Advocate for economic justice and would-be astronaut. Amateur chef, leather worker and polyglot.

“A lot of us scientists don’t know how to operate or interact beyond our bubble of scientists, but Mark has so many different interests and can relate to anybody,” Lee said. “When we were out there in Africa, he was supposedly my student, but we were more like colleagues. He was learning from me. I was learning from him. Over the years, I have looked to him a lot for moral leadership and how just to be a person.”

It came as no surprise to Lee that after Little graduated from

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Rice with a Ph.D. in geology and geophysics, he pivoted to a job that has little to do with geology or geophysics. Little heads two initiatives — NCGrowth and CREATE — at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, drawing on his commitment to helping rural and underserved communities in North Carolina and in the low country of coastal South Carolina.

In both states, more than 13% of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, with poverty rates above 20% for African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans. NCGrowth provides technical assistance to businesses and local governments while CREATE contributes research, data analytics and policy development.

“We focus on places we like to call ‘high potential,’” Little said. “Other people have other names for these places — high poverty, etc. The way I like to think about what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to radically change places and how people think of themselves and how outsiders think of them.

We provide on-the-ground support for people who have not reached their aspirations yet.

“Sometimes a project is very concrete,” he said, recalling the time a graduate student in engineering built a robot to take over the time-consuming task of dropping seeds into growing

trays at a wetland nursery near the North Carolina coast. “And sometimes it’s meta: Here’s a planning document to think about an opportunity that exists.”

PROJECTS AND POTENTIAL Little joined the Kenan Institute in 2011 when he needed a job and the institute needed a part-time research associate. That led to a full-time research position, and, three years later, he was named executive director of the institute. He stepped down in January 2020 to devote more time directly in the field with NCGrowth and CREATE. “I feel like I’m where I need to be,” he said. “My goal is to increase the work and profile of what we’re doing and the vision we have of this possible future that we could be existing in.

Given our focus both on communities struggling and on Black lives, I am doing everything I can do to push things forward.”

In his home state of North Carolina, which stretches 500 miles from the barrier islands of the Outer Banks to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the west, pockets of poverty can be found in wealthier urban centers such as Charlotte and Raleigh. But most of the state’s poverty is concentrated in the vast rural regions of the coastal east and mountainous west — a legacy of slavery and historically low wages, among other things.

At NCGrowth, Little works with eight managers overseeing more than 50 projects annually. They identify communities based on economic factors such as median income, unemployment rate and poverty rate, and hire graduate students from 20 universities across the Carolinas to conduct on-the-ground analysis.

In Tarboro, a town of 11,000 residents in eastern North Carolina, an MBA student helped a boat manufacturer redesign his plant floor to be more efficient. A team of graduate students with expertise ranging from planning to industrial design advised the city of High Point on ways to transform an area of abandoned furniture factories into a manufacturing hub. And in the city of Asheville, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, another team provided industry research and social marketing for a company that crafts nonalcoholic beverages.

“For any particular project, there’s a project manager who owns the relationship and makes sure the project moves along,” Little said. “And then there’s another pool of people — professionals and professors — who support the work and make sure the work we are doing is quality.”

Left: Roderick McMillan is a beneficiary of NCGrowth and the owner of MG3 Farms. He stands outside of the hydroponic grow house he created by converting a former tobacco greenhouse on his family’s farm in Maxton, North Carolina.

A MORE EQUITABLE VISION Little’s approach is to discover what a community or business envisions for itself and determine if there is a way that the centers at the Kenan Institute can support that vision. In 2016, NCGrowth undertook a study for the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, which was founded by members of the Lumbee Tribe in 1887 and is now one of 16 campuses in

the statewide UNC system. Officials there were looking for ways to support the surrounding community, where 1 in 4 people live in poverty.

NCGrowth found that only 5% of the university’s vendors came from the town of Pembroke and only 22% from surrounding Robeson County. One of the most startling discoveries was that only 2% of the produce for its dining hall came from local farmers despite the fact that the university is located in one of the state’s largest agricultural regions.

NCGrowth helped identify local suppliers, and now the university buys more than 16% of its produce from within the

“We focus on places we like to call ‘high potential.’ Other people have other names for these places — high poverty, etc. The way I like to think about what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to radically change places and how people think of themselves and how outsiders think of them.” community, pumping an estimated $100,000 into the economy every year. One beneficiary was Roderick McMillan, owner of MG3 Farms and a member of the Lumbee Tribe. After being laid off from his job at a granary, he decided to convert a former tobacco greenhouse on his family’s farm into a hydroponic growing business. “They helped me get set up legally and get my business going,” McMillan said about NCGrowth. He sells about 300 pounds of romaine lettuce to UNC Pembroke every week.

Based on the success of that project, Little has been talking with congressional offices about legislation to encourage or incentivize all of the country’s nonprofit anchor institutions — such as universities, hospitals and military bases — to buy from businesses in communities disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There are a couple of things about us that I think are unique,” Little said. “First, we’re very much on the ground: What is the problem and how do we fix it? What businesses would be successful in a town? We are also doing academic research and talking with policymakers. We are working toward a vision of the future that looks equitable.”

After a project is completed, NCGrowth follows up with clients every six months for three years, measuring success through new job creation, job retention and new privatepublic financial investments.

Linda Joyner got to know Little in her role as commissioner for Princeville, one of the first towns in America chartered

M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 4 3

“We’re very much on the ground: What is the problem and how do we fix it? What businesses would be successful in a town? We are also doing academic research and talking with policymakers. We are working toward a vision of the future that looks equitable.”

Above: Mark Little by freed slaves. Her community sought photographed at NCGrowth’s advice on ways to build its the Hayti Heritage economy after years of distress exacCenter in Durham, North Carolina. erbated by devastating flooding from Located on the Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and Hurricane site of the historic Matthew in 2016. Joyner heard about St. Joseph’s African Methodist Little’s credentials before she met him: Episcopal Church magna cum laude graduate of Harvard, in the storied Hayti Outstanding Graduate Student at Rice, neighborhood, the center served postdoctoral fellow at Duke University as the opening and Luce scholar at Peking Univervenue for the 2019 sity. She expected someone “stiff and Black Communities conference starched,” but his warmth put her at ease. co-founded “Mark became one of us,” Joyner said. “He

by Little. doesn’t look like he’s standing above us.

He is in the crowd with us. We know that we can call on him.”

TAKING FLIGHT Little talks just as passionately about the projects and the people he’s working with. Andrew Tsui, a health care lawyer in Washington, D.C., who has known Little since preschool, believes that Little’s role at the Kenan Institute allows him room to draw on a remarkable range of abilities. Little might not be as creative, Tsui said, if he were analyzing soils in a lab or working on Capitol Hill, where he drafted climate and mineral resources-related bills as a fellow with the American 44 RICE M AG A ZINE W IN T ER 202 1

Association for the Advancement of Science.

“Mark is the type of person who really creates opportunities but requires a multidisciplinary approach,” Tsui said. “He can talk about string theory in physics, and he can also talk about Native American history, Black history and Asian American history. … In Mark’s world, analog is always better than digital.

You can sit with Mark and have tea and conversation for hours and hours.”

Derek Hicks ’09, associate professor of religion and culture at Wake Forest University, remembers having those types of long, serious conversations with Little at Rice, where they each served a year as president of the Black Graduate Student Association. After they finished talking, they would go to the Proletariat nightclub where Little performed funk music with the band Porkpie.

“He is almost kind of paradoxical,” Hicks said. “He’s Bohemian meets center director meets musical performer. He can lead the efforts of a conference and then go home and continue building his own composter in his backyard.”

One of the most unique of Little’s interests is his lifelong desire to be an astronaut, a dream that consumed him as a boy captivated by the science fiction shows “Star Trek” and “Doctor Who” and novels by Octavia E. Butler. He still holds onto that dream. In 2016, he advanced to the NASA interview round at Johnson Space Center in Houston but wasn’t selected. He applied again in 2020 and is one of 12,000 applicants awaiting a decision. “The likelihood is close to zero,” Little said. “But I still think about it.”

For now, his feet are planted on the ground in North Carolina.

He and his wife, Christian Douglas, a biostatistician, live in Chapel Hill with their three young children and Little’s parents.

He draws a parallel between his efforts to become an astronaut and his current endeavors to help underserved communities.

“Some people need to work toward something they believe is going to happen. But I don’t need that. Reality doesn’t dissuade me from doing things,” Little said. “I don’t need to fool myself into thinking something will happen to make myself do it.

The places we are working with face significant challenges … and I don’t have illusions that we’re necessarily going to be completely successful. But I’m hopeful that we will be, and if there’s any chance of being successful, then it’s worth trying.” ◆

ALUMNI

PROFILES, HISTORY AND CLASSNOTES

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MICHELLE BOWEN

WRITING HOME

Saludos Desde Argentina

(Greetings From Argentina) When her travels were halted by COVID-19, Michelle Bowen ’15 found joy in staying put.

M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 4 5

ALUMNI

T

HE LINGERING smell of smoke on my clothes used to be a nuisance. Now, it reminds me of laughter and good times, cooking lamb over an open fire and braving the Patagonian winter — a glass of malbec always within arm’s reach.

Even on the coldest winter nights, we would cook under the stars — just burn some extra firewood and grab an extra bottle of wine. An Argentine “asado al palo” is not for the faint of heart: Whole body parts are mounted on a stake and cooked by the flames dancing below it.

It’s also not for those looking for a quick bite. While you might start the fire at

46 RICE M AG A ZINE W IN T ER 202 1

8 p.m., you don’t start eating until 10 or 11 p.m., with last bites lasting through midnight in true Argentine form.

In a way, COVID-19 gave us exactly what we wanted from our aroundthe-world trip. We had been traveling for seven months and had checked off nearly all the prominent sights in South America when the rapidly spreading virus stranded us at the bottom of the world. That time in the small Patagonian town gave us so much of what we were missing: an opportunity to truly experience another culture, to partake in local customs and to, just maybe, become part of a community.

To Argentines, sharing “mate” (pronounced mah-teh) is a sign of trust, a symbol of camaraderie. Mate is a bitter loose-leaf tea sipped out of a gourd with a special filter straw. In pre-pandemic times, one gourd is shared by a group of friends. The host prepares the mate and passes it to the person beside him. After sipping, the mate is returned to the host, who adds more hot water and passes it to the second person in the group.

The process repeats itself until the tea is watered down, and then it all begins

again. For Argentines, drinking mate is a sacred ritual — a time for gathering and sharing of stories among sips.

Cooking over an open fire and drinking mate are activities that Argentines share with each other. They may not be the most convenient or efficient, but they are communal and lovely. These are customs that have endured through the ages, and perhaps it is because of these customs that Argentines have endured multiple economic and political crises.

Now that I’m back in the U.S., I’ve come to realize that our time in southern Argentina, in that tiny town where most tourists rarely spend three days, has come to be one of the most valuable experiences of our trip. Leaving meant saying goodbye to a newly adopted family. I guess, ironically, pandemics have a way of bringing people together.

Michelle Bowen and her partner, Nick Gruzdowich ’15, both engineering majors, started their around-the-world trip in July 2019, which they documented at nickandmichellesbigadventure.com.

The pandemic cut their travels short, and they are now settled in Boston.

ALUMNI

ENERGY

Current Policy

PORTRAIT COURTESY OF MISHAL THADANI; WIND TURBINES AND SOLAR PANEL PHOTOS BY UNSPLASH

When it comes to clean energy, Mishal Thadani keeps moving.

MISHAL THADANI ’12 left Houston to advance his energy career.

He knew the path — use the Rice network, climb the ranks in oil and gas, sit back and drink Shiners.

But the McAllen, Texas, native’s drive extends beyond a resume: He wants to save the environment. It’s a vocation he’s had since his freshman year, when he took Introduction to Civil and Environmental Engineering with Phil Bedient, the Herman and George R. Brown Professor of Civil Engineering. Bedient’s course emphasized humans’ impact on the environment and jump-started Thadani’s interest in civil engineering.

After graduation, Thadani found jobs in Texas’ burgeoning wind energy sector, but his work often felt overshadowed among Houston’s oil and gas economy. That changed when he got an opportunity at Direct Energy — an energy retail company headquartered in Houston — in their solar department located in Washington, D.C. In the nation’s capital, Thadani found a thriving community of sustainable energy advocates, primarily through the Clean Energy Leadership Institute (CELI), a nonprofit with a coveted fellowship program. After applying for and being accepted into their fellowship program, he saw an opportunity. In 2016, the D.C. Council passed a bill that “made it the strongest market for solar energy based on [user] incentives,” Thadani said. Armed with market knowledge and a business partner he met through CELI, Thadani resigned from Direct Energy to start his own company, District Solar.

District Solar made using in-home solar energy as “turnkey” as possible.

It existed for three years and deepened solar adoption by D.C. residents, Thadani said. In the process of running the company as “a service for the District,” he learned where his interest truly lies — energy policy.

He went to work as director of market development and policy for Urbint, an AI company whose software helps identify physical risks in utility companies’ infrastructure. This work has enormous consequences for the environment — like avoiding gas explosions and minimizing forest fires — and deepens Thadani’s policy work across the country.

Energy is not only the content of his career, it is also the current of his life. Outside of his job, Thadani leads initiatives with CELI, lectures on clean energy, pens white papers about energy policy, and even helped write and pass

two pieces of legislation for the D.C. Council.

His focus is narrowing in on an important project. “Houston has never been a hub for clean energy,” he said.

That fact was on Thadani’s mind when he participated in a panel about Texas energy policy for the Rice Alternative Energy Club in fall 2020. This was exciting — a group with this scope did not exist when he was at Rice. Thadani sees a generational shift happening in Houston’s energy world. As evidence, he cites Rice’s Clean Energy Accelerator within the Jones Graduate of School of Business and the fact that more clean energy companies are headquartering in the Bayou City. Thadani represents this next generation of sustainable energy professionals — and he’s ready to be the mentor he could not find when he was at Rice. “Being the energy capital of the world means sustainable energy too.”

— ROBIN DOODY ’14

M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 47

ALUMNI CLASSNOTES

Theater Life, Fried Chicken and Photography Excerpts from Owlmanac

1960s

“I retired from Jacobs U. in 2005.

I had helped found this university during the period of 1998–2005.

It opened its doors Sept. 1, 2001, just days before 9/11. It is doing well with about 1,500 students from over 110 countries around the world. I helped model it on Rice at the time, and there are five residential colleges. It has bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degrees, all in English-language instruction.

“During these past years, I was the board president of the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Co. here in Boulder, Colo., where we have lived since 2008. I was the board president of Stages Repertory Theater

1970s

about 30 years ago in Houston, so it was interesting to come back to the theater world after my mathematical and university-building career. I was elected board president of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, a 62-year-old professional orchestra. The pandemic has created a huge set of problems for all arts organizations, and we here in Boulder will do the best we can.” — Contributed by Raymond “Ronny” Wells ’62 (Wiess: BA)

Larry Fossi ’79 (Will Rice: BA) sends along these memories in response to recollections of Orientation Week 1975: “I arrived for Orientation Week, never having seen Rice — or Houston, or even Texas — fresh off the first airplane flight of my life. … My first roommate was from a small Texas town.

I remember being a bit startled on the first day of Orientation Week when he placed his rifle, which he had brought to Rice with him, in the closet. Quite the pair we made. He was planning to acquire a fried chicken franchise in his hometown, and from there acquire others across the state. Alas, thoughts of his high school sweetheart and his future in the fried chicken business distracted him from studies. He stopped attending classes several weeks in, spent his time designing his dream home — each design invariably included a swimming pool shaped like a drumstick — and dropped out before the first semester ended.” — Contributed by class recorder Marian Barber ’79 (Jones: BA)

1980s

“I’m putting together a photo printing studio at the house, and in recent years had photo exhibits at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts, the Blue Hill Public Library and the Leica Gallery Boston. I was also in a group show of the Greater Boston Night Photographers at the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, Mass.

I even managed to sell a few prints and will try to get into some more shows as we get settled in. I’ve created some interesting portfolios of photo triptychs and tetraptychs: ‘Quarries of New England,’ ‘Orkney,’ ‘Nights in the City’ and ‘North Wales.’ I plan to continue making lyrical landscape photo work in Maine and elsewhere.” — Contributed

by Steve Keirstead ’87 (Hanszen: BA; BFA, 1988)

To access digital Classnotes, create a Rice Portal account at riceconnect.rice.edu. Once registered, log in and click “Owlmanac Online.”

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IL LU S T R AT IO N S B Y DEL P HINE L EE

ALUMNI

Q. How did you and your family handle the publicity that came from the show?

A. We decided by day one or two that we were just going to soak in all the positive and let go of the rest. You can pick and choose what you want to hear in the world; you can seek out the negativity or just enjoy all the goodness. I’ve always said that, and I say that in the show. They say, “What if a guy rejects you?” I say, “That’s fine. If I’m not for you, that’s OK. You don’t have to like me. I like me.” To hear from people who’ve never met me and never will meet me, saying “I don’t like her” or “I do like her” — either way it’s kind of strange. They care about this a lot. That’s not something I had really planned for.

Q. It seemed like you had as many defenders as detractors on social media.

How did that feel?

A. It’s been great to see that some people have really identified with this portrayal and been inspired by it. Obviously I know I’m a lot more nuanced than the character they portrayed me as, but a lot of women are seeing that character as someone who is unapologetically herself, stands up for what she wants, and has the courage to wait for the right partner and not just settle because she’s reached the age in society where she’s told she has to settle.

LIFE AFTER RICE

Star Turn

After stealing the show on “Indian Matchmaking,” Aparna Shewakramani is shaking off the haters and mulling her next role.

THE MOST POLARIZING CHARACTER ON NETFLIX’S hit reality show “Indian Matchmaking,” Houston lawyer Aparna Shewakramani ’07 has inspired legions of admirers — and legions more who love to hate her. On the show, which follows professional matchmaker Sima Taparia as she works to find the perfect partner for her Indian and Indian American clients, Shewakramani is cast as the villain — too stubborn and picky to easily pair. And while there’s more to her in real life, of course, Shewakramani doesn’t mind if you see her as the bad guy. Her attitude is: When life gives you mean memes, make T-shirts out of them. (You can buy hers at aparnastyle.com.) We caught up with Shewakramani recently to find out how TV stardom has changed her life.

P H O T O B Y D I V YA PA N D E ’ 0 6

Q. What’s next for you?

A. I have a luxury travel business where we curate tours for young professionals in their 30s and 40s. It’s called My Golden Balloon, and we handle all the arrangements, so you can just sit back and relax and go on my dream vacation, led by me. We had trips planned throughout 2020, but obviously they all got canceled. It turned out not to be a great time to start a travel business, but we’re pivoting. I’m also working on a book. It’s a behindthe-scenes look at “Indian Matchmaking,” but it’s also about my life and the lessons I’ve learned — Aparna’s rules for living.

Q. What if Netflix asked you to do a spinoff reality show? Would you do it?

A. Sure. I’m always open to ideas. I could do a travel show. Or someone suggested that maybe next time I could be the matchmaker. I think I’d do a pretty good job.

— JENNIFER LATSON

M AG A ZINE . RICE . EDU 49

The squirrels on Rice’s campus have become almost as iconic as Lovett Hall. Regularly photographed and sought out, these bushy-tailed tree lovers live in an oasis packed with bountiful live oaks and an endless supply of acorns. While the amount of traffic across campus has decreased, the squirrel population remains intact, despite fewer apple cores and half-eaten bagels to round out their diets. — TRACEY RHOADES

LAST LOOK 50 RICE M AG A ZINE W IN T ER 202 1

PHOTO BY TOMM Y L AV ERGNE

THIS IS HOW WE CREATE COMMON GROUND

PHOTO BY JEFF FITLOW

In the midst of COVID-19, how do we sort through the deluge of information to stay safe?

Elaine Howard Ecklund, the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences, knows from years of research and community engagement that one of the most direct influences on social behavior can be spiritual leadership. And with 85% of the world identifying as religiously affiliated, spiritual leadership can make a big difference on how individuals respond in times of crisis.

This integral connection between religion and public life is why Ecklund founded the Religion and Public Life Program (RPLP) more than a decade ago. It’s why, even before COVID-19, the RPLP was inviting over 300 religious and civic leaders onto Rice University’s campus and into Ecklund’s home to discuss research related to pressing issues and find common solutions. And it’s why the RPLP recently convened an online discussion with religious leaders around the U.S. to discuss how they are helping their congregations adopt safety measures during the pandemic.

“We find ourselves in a time when using research within religious communities is critical to providing practical tools to solve cultural and social problems,” Ecklund says. “At RPLP, we like to say that we use research on religion to find common ground for the common good, and in the midst of the challenges facing our nation and our globe, this work has never been more important.”

The RPLP is asking how religion influences big questions around race, gender, politics, science, immigration and more. To support this groundbreaking work, contact Debbie Diamond, director of development, at 713-348-4673 or ddiamond@rice.edu, and visit rplp.rice.edu to learn more.

giving.rice.edu

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ON THE WEB

magazine.rice.edu ONLINE EXCLUSIVE

Opera, Virtually

NEXT UP A BRIGHT SPOT IN HOUSTON DURING a sheltered pandemic year was the opening of the new Houston Botanic Garden in September. The 132-acre oasis, situated along Sims Bayou, is the culmination of decades of planning and construction by garden advocates, conservationists and philanthropists. In its first stage, eight different garden themes and collections connect to the city’s natural and human ecosystems. As president and general counsel of the new garden, Claudia Gee Vassar ’99 is stewarding the development of this unique expression of Houston’s identity. Writer Deborah Lynn Blumberg digs into the project’s history — the site was formerly the Glenbrook Golf Course — as well as its ongoing mission to be a place of learning, discovery and natural beauty in a city that’s increasingly working to invest in and recognize the importance of its natural spaces.

The Shepherd School’s Opera Department and Chamber Orchestra presented “Der Kaiser von Atlantis” (“The Emperor of Atlantis”) last fall. The groundbreaking production combines recorded musical performances, green screen backgrounds and lots of ingenuity to tell a story of resistance. The only opera written by Viktor Ullmann, “Der Kaiser” was completed in 1943 and includes a libretto by Jewish poet Peter Kien. It is a prime example of the musical resistance that took place in Czechoslovakia’s Theresienstadt ghetto during World War II. The story of this opera and the full performance are available online.

VIDEO EXTRA

Rice Roommates’ Odyssey to a COVID-19 Vaccine

In October, the combined homecoming, reunion and Families Weekend featured a wealth of online programming, including a special President’s Lecture Series event with former Will Rice roommates Barney Graham ’75 and Bill Gruber ’75, both leaders in two of the first COVID-19 vaccines. Graham, deputy director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Vaccine Research Center, and Gruber, senior vice president of Pfizer Vaccine Clinical Research and Development, shared stories from their years at Rice and their oft-intersecting careers in medicine, research and vaccine development.