rice eng mag 2011
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2011 Rice Engineering MagazineTRANSCRIPT
We are now about T minus 365 days and counting to
October 12, 2012 and I am very pleased to be the guy in
Mission Control who will take the School of Engineering
into its second century. Since joining Rice in July, I have had
the pleasure of meeting with many students, faculty and
alumni. With each of these meetings I learn more about Rice
and gain more appreciation of why those closely associated
with the school are so loyal to it. Houston is very different
from Boston in many ways, and there are many things
that differentiate Rice from MIT. However, these schools
have two important things in common: great students and
outstanding faculty. I see the School of Engineering as on
track to do even greater things, and I look forward to meeting
with more of you and enlisting you in our common effort.
In this issue of Rice Engineering magazine, we take a look at
how the School is engaged in Provost George McLendon’s
three areas of focus for the university: medicine and health,
energy and the environment and global engagement. These
areas have been identified through many conversations with
Rice faculty and in the spirit of the University’s Vision for the
Second Century, they draw on the strengths of our faculty and
researchers which are linked to our proximity to the energy
industry and to Texas Medical Center, and our engagement
with universities and corporations around the world.
In this issue you can read about why there is so much excitement
around the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen and the Rice
Center for Engineering Leadership. Our students have been busy
winning competitions with their design projects fabricated in the
OEDK and RCEL is creating new courses and enabling activities
outside the classroom to develop our students’ leadership skills.
But while we celebrate our students’ successes, we mourn the
passing of Ken Oshman ’62, who with his wife, Barbara, made
the OEDK possible. Ken will be greatly missed but his deep love
of Rice and his dedication to the advancement of engineering
education will live on in the facility that bears his name.
One of the great pleasures of being a dean is to get
news of faculty and students winning recognition for their
contributions to engineering. Just this month, Richard Tapia
was named a recipient of the National Medal of Science, the
highest honor our country bestows on its scientists and
engineers. This is one of the many impressive awards you
can read about in the awards section of this issue.
I’ve attended several events put on by the Rice Engineering Alumni
and I look forward to many more. The School of Engineering benefits
greatly from the engagement of our alumni with our students and
faculty, and if you haven’t been involved, I encourage you to do
so. You’ll find a calendar of upcoming events at the end of this
issue. Come to campus and help us mark Rice’s first hundred years
and launch us into the next. We’d love to see you in attendance!
Ned
Edwin L. “Ned” Thomas William and Stephanie Sick Dean of Engineering
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New faculty
A new twist on old technology
Batteries on the nanoscale
Tackling the complexity of biological systems
Chipping away at diagnosing disease
Going global
Rice hosts NanoJapan
RCEL gives students opportunities to lead
Philosophy of leadership informs practice
Engineers in the halls of power
OEDK inspires students to win!
Electric Owl soars in competitions
In memoriam: Ken Oshman
Student awards
Faculty awards
Jim Young retires
REA names outstanding alumni
Interview with REA president George Webb
Mastering the marriage of business and technology
REA awards picnic
Calendar of events
Parting shot
Caleb Kemere will join the faculty of the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering as an assistant professor
in 2012. Kemere is currently a Sloan Schwartz Postdoctoral
Fellow in the W.M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative
Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco.
Kemere earned a B.S. in electrical engineering
and a B.A. in economics from the University
of Maryland in 1998. From Stanford
University he earned a master’s degree and
Ph.D. in 2000 and 2005, respectively. In
2008, Kemere was awarded a Helen Hay
Whitney Fellowship in Biomedical Sciences.
His research focuses on the hippocampus, a
part of the brain critical to the formation and recall of memories. He
hopes to understand how activity and plasticity in neural circuits
underlie both learning and the ability to use learned information to
make decisions. Kemere will combine low-power embedded systems
and advanced signal processing to build systems to decode the brief
patterns of neural activity corresponding to individual memories, and
map how they are stored, recalled and used to guide behavior.
new faculty
Before joining the Rice faculty, Swarat Chaudhuri was
assistant professor of computer science and engineering at
Pennsylvania State University, starting in January 2008. He
received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from
the Indian Institute of Technology,
Kharagpur, in 2001, and a Ph.D.
in computer science from the
University of Pennsylvania in 2007.
Chaudhuri has received the National
Science Foundation CAREER Award, the
ACM SIGPLAN Outstanding Doctoral
Dissertation Award, and the Morris and
Dorothy Rubinoff Award from the University of Pennsylvania.
Chaudhuri’s research aims to bring a closer integration between
automated reasoning and the art and science of program
design. In his vision, the programmer of the future will focus
on the creative, algorithmic aspects of program design; tools
capable of automatic reasoning about programs will manage
the tedious, lower-level details. This will make programming
more accessible and fun, he says: “After all, there are tasks
that machines are simply better at. You wouldn’t want a human
to do repetitive calculations on large amounts of data.”
Herbert Levine, professor of physics at the University
of California, San Diego, will become the Hasselman
Professor of Bioengineering when he joins the faculty in
2012. Levine specializes in research on nonequilibrium
processes with applications in many biological systems.
He has developed new theoretical approaches to
explain the directed cell motion of eukaryotic cells.
Levine received his B.S. in physics
from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology in 1976, and his M.A.
and Ph.D. in physics from Princeton
in 1977 and 1979, respectively. He
joined the faculty at UCSD in 1987.
Levine is the immediate past chair
of the American Physical Society’s
Division of Biological Physics and recently completed a
six-year term as associate editor of the Biophysical Journal.
Last spring he was elected to the National Academy of
Sciences. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society
and chair of the APS Division of Biological Physics.
Levine is co-founder and co-director of UC San Diego’s
Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, funded by the
National Science Foundation Physics Frontiers Centers
program. He will move his research laboratory to Rice’s
BioScience Research Collaborative, where much of his
work will focus on cancer. He will collaborate with cancer
specialists in the Texas Medical Center to apply new
concepts from physics to cancer research and treatment.
03 RICE ENGINEERING
new faculty
On July 1, Edwin L. “Ned” Thomas became
dean of Rice University’s George R. Brown School
of Engineering. For 22 years Thomas was on
the faculty of the nation’s top-ranked Department
of Materials Science and Engineering at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
As a materials scientist and mechanical engineer,
Thomas joined the MIT faculty in 1989. Its Department
of Materials Science and Engineering has been ranked
No. 1 by U.S. News and World Report for all 22 years.
As MIT’s Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science
and Engineering, Thomas worked with electrical
engineers and physicists on photonics and nanostructure
fabrication and collaborated with synthetic polymer
chemists, chemical engineers and mechanical engineers.
In 2002 he founded MIT’s Institute for Soldier
Nanotechnologies (ISN), which has received more
than $11 million in annual funding and includes
some 60 faculty members from 12 departments. ISN
research has resulted in lightweight gear for the
military and a device to remotely detect explosives.
Co-author of the textbook The Structure of Materials
(1999), Thomas advocates “practical engineering.”
He has 14 patents, three of which are licensed
to a company he co-founded, OmniGuide, which
specializes in minimally invasive CO2 surgery. A
“perfect mirror” developed by Thomas and a student is
used in flexible, hollow-core photonic fibers for laser
surgical applications in endoscopic procedures.
Thomas is well-known for research in polymeric
materials. He served as director of MIT’s Program
in Polymer Science and Technology and as deputy
director of the MIT Microphotonics Center before
he was appointed chair of the Department of
Materials Science and Engineering in 2006.
Coming from a department with a research budget of
$35 million, 32 faculty members, 225 graduate students,
140 undergraduates and 83 postdocs, Thomas
said Rice’s engineering school is “the right size.”
“I’ll be able to remember the names and faces of
everyone on the faculty,” he said. Thomas said he
has “a good gene” for finding gifted faculty and staff.
“At Rice,” he said, “there’s a chance to move the
university forward. It’s in my DNA to lead and make
things better, and this is a great opportunity to do that.”
In addition to serving as dean, Thomas is the William
and Stephanie Sick Chair and a professor in the
Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Materials
Science and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
“Ned is a terrific addition to our leadership team at
Rice, and we welcome his breadth of perspective,”
President David Leebron said. “With his broad
experience and record of accomplishments, he’s
just the right person to lead our engineering
school to even higher levels of achievement.”
Before MIT, Thomas served on the chemical
engineering faculty at the University of Minnesota
and as chair of the Polymer Science and Engineering
Department at the University of Massachusetts. In
2009 he was elected to the National Academy
of Engineering and the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences. He has a B.S. in mechanical
engineering and engineering science from the
University of Massachusetts, and earned a Ph.D. in
materials science from Cornell University in 1974.
Thomas was born and raised in Attleboro, Mass.,
once known as “The Jewelry Capital of the World,”
and his father worked as a jeweler for the L.G.
Balfour Co. Thomas and his wife of 40 years, Dee,
have three daughters and three grandsons.
RICE ENGINEERING 04
Researchers from Rice and Lockheed Martin have discovered how to use silicon to radically increase the capacity of lithium-ion batteries. Sibani Lisa Biswal, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, Michael Wong, a professor in the same department, and Steven Sinsabaugh, a Lockheed Martin Fellow, have enhanced silicon’s capacity to absorb lithium ions.
Their breakthrough was announced at Rice’s Buckyball Discovery Conference, part of a year-long celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the buckminsterfullerene, or carbon 60, molecule. It could become a key component for electric car batteries and large-capacity energy storage.
RICE ENGINEERING 06
“The anode, or negative, side of today’s batteries is made of graphite, which works. It’s everywhere,” Wong said. “But it’s maxed out. You can’t stuff any more lithium into graphite.”
Silicon has the highest theoretical capacity of any material for storing lithium. “It can sop up a lot of lithium, about 10 times more than carbon, which seems fantastic,” Wong said. “But after a couple of cycles of swelling and shrinking, it’s going to crack.”
Other labs have tried to solve the problem with carpets of silicon nanowires that absorb lithium like a mop soaks up water, but the Rice team took a different tack.
With Madhuri Thakur, a post-doctoral researcher in chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Mark Isaacson of Lockheed Martin, Biswal, Wong and Sinsabaugh found that putting micron-sized pores into the surface of a silicon wafer gives the material room to expand. While conventional lithium-ion batteries hold about 300 milliamp hours per gram of carbon-based anode material, treated silicon could theoretically store more than 10 times that amount.
Sinsabaugh described the breakthrough as one of the first fruits of the Lockheed Martin Advanced Nanotechnology Center of Excellence at Rice (LANCER).
Nanopores are simpler to create than silicon nanowires. The pores—a micron wide and 10 to 50 microns long—form when a positive and negative charge is applied to the sides of a silicon wafer, which then is bathed in a hydrofluoric solvent. The researchers are confident that inexpensive, plentiful silicon combined with ease of manufacture could help push their idea into the mainstream.
“There are several silicon-based anode materials that have been reported,” Biswal said. “But we think this has the potential to be low cost and easily amenable to current battery fabrication technologies.”
07 RICE ENGINEERING
The world at the nano-scale may soon follow the lead of the more familiar macro-scale and run on lithium-ion batteries. Rice University researchers have moved a step closer to creating robust, three-dimensional microbatteries that would charge faster and hold other advantages over conventional lithium-ion batteries.
The breakthrough could power new generations of remote sensors, display screens, smart cards, flexible electronics and biomedical devices.
Pulickel Ajayan, the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor of Engineering, and his colleagues found a way to fabricate the cathode, electrolyte and anode, of a hybrid electrochemical device into a single nanowire and tested an array of such nanowire energy storage devices for its electrochemical performance.
The findings were reported in the July 14, 2011, issue of the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.
Ajayan and his colleagues tested two versions of the battery/supercapacitor hybrid. The first combines nickel/tin anode, polyethylene oxide (PEO) electrolyte and polyaniline cathode layers. The second packs the same capabilities into a single nanowire. The researchers built centimeter-scale arrays containing thousands of nanowire devices, each about 150 nanometers wide. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.
RICE ENGINEERING 08
Ajayan’s team has been moving toward single-nanowire devices for years. They first reported creation of three-dimensional nanobatteries in 2010. In that project, they encased vertical arrays of nickel-tin nanowires in PMMA, which served as an electrolyte and insulator. In that battery, the encased nickel-tin was the anode but the cathode was outside.
They eventually settled on an easily synthesized polymer known as polyaniline (PANI) as their cathode. The new process tucks the cathode inside the nanowires, Ajayan said.
“The idea here is to fabricate nanowire energy storage devices with ultrathin separation between the electrodes,” said Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, a Rice research scientist and co-author of the paper. “This affects the electrochemical behavior of the device. Our device could be a very useful tool to probe nanoscale phenomena.”
The team’s experimental batteries are some 50 microns tall—roughly the diameter of a human hair. Theoretically, the nanowire energy storage devices can be as long and wide as the templates allow.
The nanowire devices show good capacity; the researchers are fine-tuning the materials to increase their ability to repeatedly charge and discharge, which now drops off after about 20 cycles. “Optimization of the polymer separator and its thickness and an exploration of different electrode systems could lead to improvements,” Sanketh Gowda, the paper’s lead author said.
The Hartley Family Foundation, Rice University, National Institutes of Health, Army Research Office and the Department of Defense’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative supported the research.
By definition, systems and synthetic biology
(SSB) is multi-disciplinary, an emerging
field of study bridging research in biological
systems at different levels, including cellular
and molecular, and straddling conventional
engineering and scientific bodies of knowledge.
“From sequencing the genome to learning which
genes cause which diseases and then figuring
out ways to treat them, is a huge job. It is a
multistage and interdisciplinary process, and
that’s what SSB is about,” said Marek Kimmel,
professor of statistics and bioengineering and a
founding member of the newly organized Rice
Systems and Synthetic Biology Group (RSSBG).
The group reflects this disciplinary diversity. Included
from the school of engineering are faculty members
in bioengineering, chemical and biomolecular
engineering, computer science and statistics. From
the school of natural science come members of
the biochemistry and cell biology, chemistry, and
ecology and evolutionary biology departments.
The aim of systems biology is to deepen understanding
of how biological components interact to produce
physiological responses and behaviors. In the
words of Oleg Igoshin, another founding member of
RSSBG and assistant professor of bioengineering:
“It’s an attempt to unify our understanding of
biological processes. We have molecules, we have
cells and tissues, but instead of focusing on the
parts, we focus on the interaction of the parts.”
Synthetic biology is the construction of new cellular
pathways to create desired behaviors. If systems
biologists take a “top-down” view of the cell,
synthetic biologists approach it from the bottom-up,
working to understand and use cellular and genetic
regulatory mechanisms at a fundamental level.
Taken together, systems biology and synthetic biology
overlap with the approach called quantitative biology.
One of the goals is a reliable computational model
of the cell, and another is an integrated “systems
physiology” model of the entire organism.
Genotype and phenotypeBiologists are careful to distinguish between genotype and phenotype, an organism’s
genetic inheritance and the way that inheritance is expressed. Our genotype is
the information, transmitted in the form of DNA, passed along by our parents. Our
phenotype is the outward expression of that information, everything from the color of
our hair to our metabolic rates.
09 RICE ENGINEERING
“People in systems biology are excited about what they call
predictive, preventive, personalized medicine. There’s a potential to
transform medicine by decreasing morbidity and mortality of chronic
diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s and diabetes,” Igoshin said.
Some of the science begins to sound like science fiction. Jeff
Tabor, assistant professor of bioengineering, has helped develop
“bacterial photography”—microorganisms programmed to act as a
biological film capable of genetically “printing” an image of light.
“My interest is in programming the behaviors of cells and organisms
using synthetic genetic circuits,” he said. “We are learning so much
so fast, we’re not even certain about all the practical applications.”
Tabor says his fundamental interest lies in understanding the
biological “design principles,” an organism’s rules of organization.
“That may sound abstract but our understanding of such things
has broad applications in science, medicine and biotechnology.
Science always begins with understanding how things work, which
enables us to figure out how things can work for us,” Tabor said.
Yousif Shamoo, associate professor of biochemistry and cell
biology and a founding member of RSSBG, agreed:
“The way we’ve trained future generations of researchers to tackle
biological problems has sometimes lagged behind, in part because
emerging research challenges require training in multiple disciplines.”
Sequencing the human genome was only the
beginning of the process, Shamoo said. That
accomplishment served to highlight the
underlying complexity of biological systems.
“How can we begin to understand the vast networks
of interacting parts that translate genotypes into
phenotypes? That’s an enormous step,” Shamoo said.
The new hybrid discipline aims at uncovering
fundamental information about biological systems,
and then using that knowledge in real-world
applications. Kimmel, for instance, sees its promise
in understanding and treating cancer. Igoshin sees
applications to tuberculosis and other diseases.
Ramon Gonzalez, associate professor of chemical
and biomolecular engineering, and of bioengineering,
explores its application in the development of biofuels.
“We are interested in how biological molecules
communicate with each other,” Gonzalez said. ”How
does this communication encode the processing
of information? I think we are still in the infancy
of this area. Systems and synthetic biology may
hold the key to solving many of the world’s energy
problems and, of course, medical problems.”
RICE ENGINEERING 10
The research of Matthew Bennett, assistant professor
of biochemistry and cell biology, straddles the
boundaries between experimental and theoretical
molecular systems biology. Much of his work
focuses on the dynamics of gene regulation.
“I’m interested in the creation of rationally designed
gene networks for practical applications and
fundamental science,” Bennett said.
He uses both experimental and computational
approaches to study E. coli and two varieties of yeast
to understand transcriptional signaling networks
critical to cellular decision-making processes. His
lab creates mathematical models to interpret and
predict cellular phenomena and design synthetic gene
networks. This research will ultimately illuminate how
the genotype of a cell manifests as a phenotype.
“My ultimate goal is the elucidation of the fundamental
mechanisms that govern gene regulation at all levels,” he
said. “This is very basic science which we’re only just
beginning to understand, but it promises to have many
applications for engineers in medicine and biotechnology.”
11 RICE ENGINEERING
Laura Segatori, the T.N. Law Assistant Professor in
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, researches the
relationship between protein folding and disease. She
started out working closer to the synthetic side of the
new discipline but has grown more systems-minded.
“Proteins are the main building blocks of living systems and
mediate all chemical reactions that control life. They start as
chains of amino acids that take on distinct configurations—a
process not yet understood. If proteins misfold, they
can aggregate and this can lead to disease,” she said.
Associated with the problem are Parkinson’s,
Alzheimer’s, Tay-Sachs and Gaucher’s disease.
Segatori and others in her lab study and model the
pathways that facilitate cellular protein folding. Proteins
misfold even in healthy people, Segatori said, and cells
have an efficient system for preventing the formation
of aggregates and eliminating misfolded proteins. But
the system can break down, Segatori said, “and
that’s one of the problems we want to solve.”
In a word, the lab of Amina A. Qutub, assistant professor
of bioengineering, studies oxygen. “All the leading
diseases in the developed world involve the body’s
response to low oxygen, including neurodegenerative
diseases and cancer. We study how the body responds
to low oxygen, employing methods from cell biology,
computer science and engineering,” she said.
In one project, Qutub studies the brain’s repair system to
better understand and design new treatments for stroke,
neurodegenerative diseases and brain injury. The goal
is to discover patterns in cell behavior during new brain
capillary formation. “We model brain and blood vessel cells
as miniature self-adapting robots, or agents,” Qutub said.
With researchers at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, she
also researches acute myeloid leukemia. Using statistics
and mathematical analysis to study proteins from more than
500 patients, she characterizes unique signaling pathways.
“We hope to find new drug targets to treat leukemia and
tailor the treatments to particular patients,” she said.
Microsponges derived from seaweed hold promise in
diagnosing heart disease, cancers, HIV and other diseases
quickly and more inexpensively than current clinical methods.
The microsponges are an essential component
of Rice University’s Programmable Bio-Nano-
Chip (PBNC) and the focus of a paper in the
March 7, 2011, issue of the journal Small.
Written by John McDevitt, the Brown-Wiess Professor in
Bioengineering and Chemistry, and colleagues at Rice’s
BioScience Research Collaborative, the paper suggests
PBNCs could become a mainstream diagnostic tool.
PBNCs are the focus of several human clinical trials
involving cardiovascular disease, cancer and drug
abuse. One chip designed to detect heart attacks using a
patient’s saliva is being tested at the Michael E. DeBakey
VA Medical Center (MEDVAMC) in collaboration with
Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston.
PBNCs capture biomarkers in blood, saliva and other
bodily fluids, and sequester them in sponges set in
an array of inverted pyramid-shaped funnels in the
microprocessor heart of the credit card-sized PBNC.
When a fluid sample is put into the disposable device,
microfluidic channels direct it to the sponges, which are infused
with antibodies that detect and capture specific biomarkers.
They can be analyzed within minutes using a microscope
and computer built into a portable, toaster-sized reader.
The microsponges are 280-micrometer beads of agarose, an
inexpensive material derived from seaweed, and often used
as a matrix for growing live cells or capturing proteins.
Agarose captures a variety of targets from large protein
biomarkers to tiny drug metabolites. In the lab, agarose
starts as a powder, like Jell-O. Mixed with hot water, it can be
formed into gels or solids of any size. The size of the pores
and channels in agarose can be reduced to the nanoscale.
The challenge, McDevitt said, was defining a new concept
for quickly and efficiently capturing and detecting biomarkers
within a microfluidic circuit. His solution is a network of
microsponges with tailored pore sizes and nano-nets of
agarose fibers. The sponge-like quality allows fluid to be
processed quickly, while the nano-net provides a huge surface
area that can be used to generate optical signals 1,000
times greater than conventional refrigerator-sized devices.
13 RICE ENGINEERING
“Ultimately, PBNCs will enable rapid, cost-effective
diagnostic tests for patients in an emergency room, an
ambulance or those being treated in their own homes.”
—John McDevitt
The team found that agarose beads with a diameter of about 280
micrometers are ideal for real-world applications and can be mass-
produced inexpensively. Agarose beads retain efficiency at capturing
biomarkers, are easy to handle and don’t require specialized optics.
“We create an ultrahigh-surface-area microsponge that collects
a large amount of material,” McDevitt said. “The sponge is
like a jellyfish with tentacles that capture the biomarkers.”
The agarose bead is engineered to become invisible in water.
“That makes it an ideal environment to capture biomarkers,
because the matrix doesn’t get in the way of visualizing the
contents. This is a nice use of novel biomaterials that are cheap
as dirt, yet yield powerful performance,” McDevitt said.
Ultimately, he said, PBNCs will enable rapid, cost-effective
diagnostic tests for patients in an emergency room, an
ambulance or those being treated in their own homes.
Someday, the chips may permit quick, simple testing of
the healthy to look for early warning signs of disease.
Last spring, Rice offered for the first time a practical course in
microfluidics, the basis for “lab-on-a-chip” technologies. Under
McDevitt’s supervision, 11 undergraduates and four graduate
students finished construction of their own devices in the wet
lab at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK).
Lectures were given at the BioScience Research Collaborative
and students worked at the OEDK on biosensors based on
three materials: paper, laminates and polydimethylsiloxane, a
silicon-based organic polymer. “Almost half the students told
me that this course is going to change their career decisions.
Some will go on to study microfluidics, and others are thinking of
practicing medicine, but now they’re open-minded to the methods
and devices that can be put into practice,” McDevitt said.
Co-authors of the Small paper included first author Jesse
Jokerst, a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at
Stanford University; postdoctoral students James Camp, Jorge
Wong, Alexis Lennart, Amanda Pollard and Yanjie Zhou, all of the
departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of
Texas at Austin; Mehnaaz Ali, an Assistant Professor of chemistry
at Xavier University; and from the McDevitt Lab at Rice: Pierre
Floriano, director of microfluidics and image and data analysis;
Nicolaos Christodoulides, director of assay development; research
scientist Glennon Simmons and graduate student Jie Chou.
The National Institutes of Health, through the National Institute
of Dental and Craniofacial Research, funded the research.
RICE ENGINEERING 14
“... our students need to have global exposure as part of their professional engineering preparation.”
—Dean Ned Thomas
GOING GLOBAL
Rice University Provost George McLendon is
discussing international strategies, and how the
marketplace is changing the way we work and
interact. When he came to Rice from Duke in
September 2010, he spent time meeting with faculty
and other stakeholders, gathering their thoughts
about what Rice could or should do to enhance its
international distinction, as envisioned by the Vision
for the Second Century, the strategic plan for Rice’s
second hundred years. Across the board, three
topics clearly emerged: creating broad strategies for
bioscience and health, energy and the environment,
and building a stronger international strategy.
Task forces from across the university are working on
how those strategies might take shape and McLendon
feels positive that the spirit of collaboration will be a
boost to the process. In the meantime, he sees the
George R. Brown School of Engineering having a
great deal to contribute to Rice’s international vision.
“There are multiple parts to this, obviously,” he
says. “We’re talking about research strategies,
education strategies that are distinct for
undergraduates and graduate students, outreach
strategies, branding. They are all interrelated.”
McLendon says that Rice is working to create a series
of international partnerships with universities around
the world that will enhance research and educational
opportunities for Rice engineering students and faculty.
A memorandum of understanding has been signed with
Peking University, one of China’s leading institutions
of higher education, to create research opportunities
in nanotechnology and nanoscience and engineering.
Rice is also working on building relationships with
universities in Brazil, France and the United Kingdom
that would allow a strengthened collaborative
structure between researchers at Rice and abroad.
“Most of our expert researchers at Rice have collaborated
with faculty and groups at other institutions around
the world,” says McLendon. “Our focus on building
international strategies is a way to use these networks
so that we’re enhancing our strengths and learning
more about new ideas and new instruments for research
that are being used by our international colleagues.”
Dean of Engineering Edwin “Ned” Thomas agrees
with McLendon’s assessment and approach.
“Coordinating existing collaborations and defining
new ones in key areas with top quality institutes is
necessary in order to stay at the forefront of basic
science and technology in the new ‘flat world’ and
our students need to have global exposure as part
of their professional engineering preparation.”
“All great universities in the 21st century will be global,”
says McLendon. “And we at Rice are looking at ways
to give our students the most options to prepare
them for a global life, and offer experiences for our
faculty to strengthen their research networks.”
15 RICE ENGINEERING
Rice hosts NanoJapan
For the first five summers of its existence, NanoJapan sent
groups of American undergraduates to work as interns in
Japanese universities and national labs, doing research in
nanotechology and studying the nation’s language and culture.
That plan abruptly changed last March 11 when a powerful
earthquake struck off the Pacific coast of Tohoku, triggering a
tsunami that claimed thousands of lives and disrupted much
of the country, including its university research laboratories.
“We made decisions very quickly. By April 1 we had reversed
the program. We were inviting Japanese students to do
research at Rice,” said the founder of NanoJapan, Junichiro
Kono, professor in electrical and computer engineering and of
physics and astronomy.
By late in May, 25 Japanese undergraduates and graduate
students had arrived to spend two months of intensive study on
the Rice University campus. Joining them were the 14
American students already enrolled in the program.
“We believed the best way to support Japan was to continue to
conduct business as usual,” Kono said, “but some of our
partner labs, especially those at Tohoku University, were
severely affected by the earthquake and not ready to host any
students. In the end, we decided this reverse program was the
best way to address the situation.”
Kono worked closely with colleagues in the Rice schools of
engineering and natural sciences to place each student in an
adviser’s research lab appropriate to his or her academic
background and research interests.
“The advisers were eager to support our program. Many of
them had close research collaborators in Japan who were also
affected by the earthquake and tsunami,” NanoJapan program
administrator Sarah Phillips said.
Some student projects involved the fabrication and
characterization of nanostructures and nanomaterials, in
particular carbon-based materials such as nanotubes and
graphene.
“There was emphasis on the interaction of terahertz radiation
with electrons in nanosystems,” Phillips said.
Students also submitted abstracts to the Rice Quantum
Institute’s Summer Research Colloquium held in August. The
program encourages intercultural exchanges. Students were
housed at Rice’s graduate student apartments, and many
American students had Japanese roommates.
“There’s a lot of interaction between U.S .and Japanese
students in our program,” Phillips said. “It’s rare to see one of
our students alone—they’re almost always with at least one
other NanoJapan student.”
NanoJapan started in 2005 with funding from the NSF’s
Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE)
initiative. The program is open to students from all U.S.
universities and combines a traditional study-abroad experience
in Japan with an undergraduate research internship in
nanotechnology.
About 15 American students customarily take part in the
12-week program. Once in Tokyo, students undergo three
weeks of intensive language training, three hours each day.
Kono, a native of Japan, visits host labs before students arrive.
He receives weekly reports from each student and regularly
speaks with faculty hosts.
In 2010, PIRE awarded the program a new five-year grant. In
2008, NanoJapan received the Institute of International
Education’s (IIE) prestigious Andrew Heiskell Award for
Innovation in International Education.
To learn more about NanoJapan go to
http://www.nanojapan.rice.edu.
RICE ENGINEERING 16
upcoming RcEL EvEnts
Engineering Houston’s FutureNovember 11-12, 2011
Organized by Rice engineering students, this two-day conference is free and open
to the public. Speakers will include leaders in local government and business.
Elevator Pitch CompetitionNovember 17, 2011
Engineering student design teams have 60 seconds to pitch their
projects and convince judges of the commercialization potential of
their projects. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information on these events and other RCEL activities, see rcel.rice.edu.
When Rice University alumni John ’73 and Ann ’75
Doerr made a $15-million gift to found the Rice Center
for Engineering Leadership (RCEL), they hoped to instill
in Rice engineering students the foresight to identify
the world’s most pressing problems, the resolve to
tackle them and a passion for innovative solutions.
“The Center is here to challenge you to do more and be more,”
John Doerr said last fall in a presentation to Rice students,
faculty and staff celebrating RCEL’s founding. “Engage with
the Center, engage with the projects, figure out how you can
be the most powerful leader you can possibly be. In the next
chapter of your life, I think you’re going to be judged on your
ability to listen actively and think critically … you’re going to be
judged on your ability to communicate, to think and speak on
your feet, to debate the merits of the great issues of our times,
and to do so in small groups, in large groups and in teams.”
Over the last year, Doerr’s challenge to students
has played out across the George R. Brown School
of Engineering as RCEL has established new
courses, supported internships, funded engineering
student trips, hired faculty and prepared to open
offices in Abercrombie Hall. These activities have
enabled an expanded experience for students,
said Mark Embree, RCEL’s director and professor
of computational and applied mathematics.
“Our programs draw students from across the
school to work together,” Embree said. Thus,
some of the most interesting students in the
school—who previously would’ve only met
through serendipity—are now placed side by
side. It makes for interesting conversations
about topics that span disciplines.”
R ICE CENTER FORENGINEERING LEADERSHIP
RcEL givEs studEnts
oppoRtunitiEs to LEad, REsouRcEs to ExcEL
17 RICE ENGINEERING
Among the programs are three new courses introduced in Spring
2010. ENGI 120 is a design course giving freshmen the opportunity
to work in teams with real-world clients. The course is coupled with
ENGI 315/316, a two-semester sequence that educates upper-class
students about leadership. These “apprentice leaders” then coach
teams of freshmen in ENGI 120 as they address design problems. Last
Spring, one freshman team worked with physicians and therapists
at Shriners Hospital to develop two prototype devices for measuring
forearm rotation. Another drew up plans to modify the irrigation
system on the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen’s “green” roof.
Based on this successful trial run, the course will be offered twice
in the 2011-12 academic year, quadrupling the number of freshmen
given this experience in team building, leadership, design and
communication. The expansion will permit more apprentice leaders
to undertake their own two-semester intensive leadership education.
“Students worked in their teams each class period and also
substantially outside of class time,” said Professor in the Practice
Ann Saterbak, who led the course. “Almost weekly, student
groups had to turn in technical memos that captured the key
results or decisions from the previous week’s work. They
were also required to present their work informally to clients
and formally to the entire class. In the real world, especially in
industry, engineers work in teams and use these skills daily.”
Embree described the class as “a blast” and said it delivered on
two of RCEL’s key components, leadership and communication,
but accomplished even more: “It reinforced my conviction that
students must get involved in design early, to start thinking like
engineers and to start thinking of themselves as engineers.”
The Apprentice Leaders program has been RCEL’s primary
curricular focus, but RCEL plans to expand these offerings. “We
want a spirit of leadership to pervade the entire School of
Engineering,” he said. “In the coming years we seek to reach
all of our students, ideally through collaboration with core
classes throughout the curriculum, and with targeted programs
in particular areas. In particular, in the next few years, we will
increase our emphasis in public policy and entrepreneurship.”
[This freshman design course] reinforced my conviction that students must get
involved in design early, to start thinking like engineers and to start thinking of
themselves as engineers.”—Mark Embree
spEaKing oF EnginEERingoppoRtunitiEs to LEad, REsouRcEs to ExcEL
RCEL encourages students to look at challenges
around them as problems with engineering
solutions. Last fall, engineering majors took
part in a seminar called “Short Talks on Big
Problems” in which they were required to
research issues related to engineering, science
and public policy. The students presented
their findings and proposed solutions to
guests, faculty and other students at the RCEL
inaugural celebration last November. To prepare
for the event, the students were coached by
Tracy Volz, who with Jan Hewitt, is a lecturer
in communication for RCEL. Opportunities for
improving communication under their tutelage
are now woven into the engineering curriculum:
Volz specializes in oral presentations and Hewitt’s
work with students is on effective writing.
“Presentation skills are essential,” said Embree.
“We emphasize fluent technical communications
from the outset, and provide students with proper
support to develop into able communicators.”
RICE ENGINEERING 18
For the ancient Greeks, a leader was someone gifted
with self-knowledge, one who could move others because
his own movements were measured and confident.
“Authentic leadership is rooted in the idea of living the examined
life, knowing who you are, what you want to achieve and where
you can contribute. Our job is to show Rice students how they
can develop their capacity for leadership,” said David Niño, newly
appointed Professor in the Practice of Engineering Leadership
at the Rice Center for Engineering Leadership (RCEL).
Niño’s undergraduate studies at the University of Texas
at Austin were in philosophy, with emphasis on Plato
and Aristotle—an intellectual legacy he carries into his
service at Rice. In addition to his work with RCEL, he is
the faculty associate for Leadership Rice and lecturer in
management in the Jones Graduate School of Business.
“David’s qualifications are unique,” said Mark Embree, director
of RCEL and professor of computational and applied
mathematics. “He has a rich background in leadership theory
and practice, and his pedagogy is top-notch. He works
with executives and he also works with students. David
will help RCEL expand its course offerings and provide a
rich set of extracurricular experiences for our students.”
RCEL was founded in 2010 with the aid of a Rice
Centennial Campaign gift of $15 million from the Beneficus
Foundation, a private charitable organization set up by
longtime benefactors and engineering school alumni, John
and Ann Doerr. John Doerr ’73 is a venture capitalist and
Ann Doerr ’75, a longtime advocate for the environment.
Niño’s education reflects his broad range of interests and
skills. In 1989, he earned a B.A. in philosophy from the
University of Texas. In 1992, from the same university, he
took a B.B.A. in finance; in 1995, a master’s degree in Latin
American Studies; in 2002, a Ph.D. in management.
Niño has more than nine years of teaching experience at the
University of Texas at Austin and at the University of Houston-
Downtown, and 15 years teaching executives in such fields
as managerial and leadership skills, teamwork, internal and
external communications, and strategic management.
“Students at Rice are extremely bright and their technical
background is outstanding. We want them to learn how to
apply those skills in the real world, how to practice teamwork
and collaboration. By learning leadership, they learn to be
better, more creative and effective engineers,” Niño said.
He reiterates RCEL’s focus on four aspects of engineering
at Rice, while emphasizing the inherent opportunities
for leadership development: design, communication
skills, international experience and entrepreneurship.
“We want to stress interdependence, that we need each other to get
things done. Leadership is not about one person doing what he or she
wants to do. It’s about enabling collective performance,” Niño said.
inFoRms pRacticEPhilosophy of leadership
“[David Niño] has a rich background in leadership
theory and practice, and his pedagogy is top-notch.”
—Mark Embree
19 RICE ENGINEERING
EnginEERs in thE haLLs oF powER
Six engineering students at Rice University learned about public
policy this summer in Houston and Washington, D.C., through
internships sponsored by the Rice Center for Engineering
Leadership (RCEL) and the Baker Institute for Public Policy.
“All of these students have the best engineering education Rice
can provide, but now they have something else,” said Mark
Embree, director of RCEL and professor of computational
and applied mathematics. “They have an education in public
policy, in the ways technology and government can work
together to solve the problems we face every day.”
Two students interned for 10 weeks with the City of Houston’s
Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs: Vivas Kumar,
a sophomore in electrical and computer engineering, and
Robyn Moskowitz, a senior in computer science.
The pair evaluated three of the city’s IT infrastructure projects,
wrote reports on each and made recommendations. In one
of the projects, they helped identify a software vendor whose
product would enable the city to meet the email search
capabilities mandated by the Texas Public Information Act.
The students filed their reports with Alfred Moran, the
city’s Director of Administration and Regulatory Affairs,
and met with Houston Mayor Annise Parker ’78.
Four undergraduates interned in Washington, D.C., through
RCEL and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy’s
Jesse Jones Leadership Center. Taking part in the Summer
in DC Policy Research Internship Program were:
Rebecca Jaffe, a senior in civil and environmental
engineering; Ellory Matzner, a senior in civil and environmental
engineering and policy studies; Sailesh Prabhu, a senior in
computational and applied mathematics and mechanical
engineering; and Rahul Rekhi, a junior in bioengineering.
Jaffe, whose interests focus on environmental policy and
sustainable transport and infrastructure, was recommended
for participation in the program by political science
professor Bob Stein. She interned at EMBARQ, the Center
for Sustainable Transport of the World Resources Institute.
“My project involved designing a model for mass transit
and then creating specific policy recommendations to
supplement the designs. One component of my project
was to statistically analyze the efficiency and safety of
different mass transit systems. This resulted in a set of
guidelines for sustainable transport that will be published
and given to policy makers worldwide,” Jaffe said.
Matzner is interested in food sustainability and
environmental policy. She worked at Defenders of
Wildlife, researching proposed agriculture legislation.
Prabhu, who is interested in space policy, researched the
comparative economic determinants of successful space
programs at NASA’s Studies and Analysis Division.
Rekhi focuses on the convergence of ethics, health, and
science and technology. He researched policy for the
Congressional Affairs Group of the Office of Legislative and
Public Affairs at the National Science Foundation. He said:
“The most important thing I learned was that the
distinction between engineering and policy isn’t quite
as great as one might imagine. Engineering, at its
core, is about solving the world’s problems—from
sustainable energy to human health—and as such,
it has a natural synergy with public policy.”
Jaffe said: “I learned about the needs of a sustainable
city, but I also learned what successfully working
in D.C. was like. Just living there during this time
in our country’s history gave me a lot of real-world
knowledge I wouldn’t have gained otherwise.”
R ICE CENTER FORENGINEERING LEADERSHIP
RICE ENGINEERING 20
Team: DragonMicrosoft Imagine Cup Competition: Third Place, Mobile Game DesignEntry: Azmo the Dragon, a device to measure lung volume, connected via Bluetooth to a smartphone running Windows 7 MobileTeam members: Computer Science: JungWoo Lee, Chase Sandmann; Health Sciences: Veronica Burkel; Sociology: Pierre Elias
Team: DexterAmerican Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Bioengineering Rehabilitation Design Competition: First PlaceEntry: Dexterity-testing device to measure the ability of a patient with cerebral palsy to complete a task, the efficiency of completion, and the subject’s motion trajectoryTeam members: Mechanical Engineering: Avery Cate, Dillon Eng, Rachel Jackson; Bioengineering: Alli Scully, Jessica Scully
Team: Tru(Hb)loodBMEStart Design Competition of the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance: Second PlaceEntry: Low-power, portable, filter-paper-based hemoglobinometer for measuring the amount of hemoglobin in blood samplesTeam members: Bioengineering: Carlos Elguea, Lina Hu and Miel Sundarajan; Electrical and Computer Engineering: Jeff Yeh, Aron Yu; Psychology: Laura Barg-Walkow
Team: EquiliberatorsRESNA Student Design Competition: Top Five Finalist (highest honor)Entry: Video game controller and diagnostic balance testing device for patients who cannot stand or walk without aidTeam members: Bioengineering: Drew Berger; Computer Science: Jesus Cortez, Irina Patrikeeva, Nick Zhu; Mechanical Engineering: Matthew Jones, Michelle Pyle; Studio Arts: Jennifer Humphreys
Team: LANARNCIIA BME-IDEA Design and Innovation Competition: Honorable MentionEntry: Optoluminator, a light-integrated surgical instrument for intra-illumination techniques in plastic surgeryTeam members: Bioengineering: Catherine Augello, Hector Munoz, Barbara Thorne-Thomsen, Michael Zhao
Among the 61 teams completing projects this year at the OEDK, 11 won recognition in international, national and regional competitions.
21 RICE ENGINEERING
Team: MAVerickAmerican Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) iShow: Top Ten FinalistEntry: Modular ambient energy harvesting device to be used on micro air vehicles (MAVs) in flightTeam members: Mechanical Engineering: Rhodes Coffey, Christopher Cromer, David McMahon, Stephen Williams
Team: Zikomo American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) iShow, BTB National Global Health Design Competition: Second place, both competitionsIEEE President’s Change the World Competition: Outstanding Humanitarian PrizeEntry: Automated syringe pump for neonatal careTeam members: Bioengineering: Elizabeth Carstens, Yiwen Cui, Rashmi Kamath, Clare Ouyang; Mechanical Engineering: Cynthia Sung
Team: StrikeoutGlobal National Instruments LabVIEW Student Design Competition: FinalistEntry: PitchPALS (Pitch Pressure Analysis and Logging System), to improve baseball pitching techniqueTeam members: Bioengineering: Ashley Herron; Electrical Engineering: Sharon Du, Henry Zhang; Mechanical Engineering: Pete Hoagland, Jenny Sullivan
Team: Electric OwlTexas Instruments Analog Design Competition: First placeTexas Space Grants Consortium Design Challenge: Top Design Team, Best Next-generation NASA Project, plus six other awardsEntry: Full-custom set of avionics as a technology demonstration for unmanned aerial vehicle capable of exploring MarsTeam members: Computer science: Robert Brockman; Electrical Engineering: Anthony Austin, Jeffrey Bridge, Peter Hokanson
Team: infantAIRSaving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development: One of 19 finalistsEntry: Bubble continuous positive airway pressure device (bCPAP) to help infants with acute respiratory infections breatheTeam members: Bioengineering: Jocelyn Brown; MBA: Cynthia Hu, Will Pike, David Tipps, Martha Vega
Team: CardiOwlsTexas Space Grants Consortium Student Design Showcase:Top Design Team (shared with Electric Owl)Entry: A wireless, 12-lead electrocardiogram system for space habitation health monitoringTeam members: Electrical and Computer Engineering: Tara Hong, Stephen Jong, Stephen Kruzick, Brian Viel
Team: NanoSPABeyond Traditional Borders National Global Health Design Competition: Best PosterEntry: Solar-powered autoclave using nanotechnology for the resource-constrained settingTeam members: Bioengineering: Ben Lu, M.K. Quinn, Shea Thompson, Eric Kim; Mechanical Engineering: Kevin Schell
RICE ENGINEERING 22
A decade ago, two friends dreamed of exploring
Mars with an aircraft of their own design.
By 2011, they and two other students had turned Electric Owl
into an award-winning senior design project at Rice University.
“These guys have known each other a long time. They’ve
created something that is remarkable in itself, and that
could be the basis of follow-on projects,” said Gary Woods,
a professor in the practice in electrical and computer
engineering (ECE) who served as adviser to Electric Owl.
On July 12, the Electric Owl project took the $10,000 Engibous
Prize for first place in Texas Instruments’ national Analog Design
Competition. Formally called “A Fault-Tolerant UAV [unmanned
aerial vehicle] Autopilot System for Mars Exploration,” the
project was designed by four Rice students—Anthony Austin,
Jeffrey Bridge, Robert Brockman and Peter Hokanson.
“This is the first time in the five years of the contest’s history
that all four Engibous judges have selected the same winning
project on the first pass. One of the judges, [TI principal
fellow] Gene Frantz, made this comment: ‘This is so far above
what you’d normally expect from a senior design project that
it’s scary,’” said Syd Coppersmith, the TI Analog University
Marketing Manager who co-founded the contest five years ago.
Bridge and Brockman, both majors in ECE, first talked about
designing a Mars explorer in 2001 and wrote the first software
for the device in 2005. They formally started the project in early
2009, and by July of that year had drawn up a 25-page project
proposal. Austin and Hokanson joined the team in 2010.
“Robert already had the model airplane experience.
What we started with was extremely primitive, but
we got up to speed pretty quickly,” Bridge said.
The students developed a full-custom set of avionics for an
unmanned aerial vehicle that could be used to explore Mars.
Starting with a stock balsa wood airframe, they built from scratch
the entire avionics system, including fully redundant sensors,
autopilot control, automatic failover to normal radio-controlled
operation, digital telemetry and integrated ground-control software.
“They were ambitious from the start, sometimes almost
too ambitious,” Woods said. “They built redundancy into
everything. At one point last year over the Christmas break,
Jeff rewrote all the software for the operating system.”
Bridge served as project manager and designed the
low-level operating system. Brockman handled the
mechanical tooling of the plane, Austin the programming of
communication among the modules in the avionics system,
and Hokanson and Brockman the sensor programming.
“We wrote 80,000 lines of code for the project. A more typical
amount for a senior design project is 3,000 or 4,000,” Bridge said.
In April, Electric Owl was named Best Conceptual or
Computational Project at the Rice Engineering Design Showcase.
With another team from Rice, the CardiOwls, Electric Owl swept
all the major awards at the Texas Space Grants Consortium end-
of-year showcase at NASA’s Johnson Space Center on April 18.
Electric Owl was supported financially by the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering and by NASA
through the Texas Space Grants Consortium. The team
worked in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen.
Electric Owl soars in competit ions
23 RICE ENGINEERING
Rice University trustee, alumnus and benefactor,
M. Kenneth Oshman ’62, died Aug. 6 after a
two-year battle with cancer. He was 71.
Oshman and his wife of 49 years, Barbara, donated the lead
gift to establish the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen
(OEDK), which was dedicated in December 2008.
His namesake building, once home to the university’s central
food-service operation, has become a point of pride for the
George R. Brown School of Engineering. The OEDK gives
engineering students a facility to take design projects from
concept to prototype with easy access to a machine shop, a
classroom, a wet lab, a welding shop and conference rooms.
Oshman told the gathering at the OEDK dedication that
“Barbara, not being an engineer, was not 1,000 percent sure
we wanted to become part of something in the engineering
department again, despite my love for the school.”
The OEDK’s mission to provide cross-discipline and cross-
technology training for students in engineering, humanities, social
sciences, architecture and business won her over. “This will be
a great base for that kind of education going forward,” he said.
Maria Oden, OEDK director and a professor in the practice
of engineering education, said Oshman’s vision for the
kitchen is paying dividends. Eleven student teams among
the 61 completing projects at the kitchen this year won 12
awards in state, national and international competitions.
“My sense was that Ken initially appreciated, maybe more so
than any of us here on campus, how this facility would change
engineering education at Rice,” Oden said. “He saw from the
industry perspective what he wanted engineers to be able to do.”
A native of Kansas City, Mo., Oshman was co-founder of
the ROLM Corporation, a Silicon Valley telecommunications
company acquired by IBM in 1984. He was vice president at
IBM until 1986, and chief executive officer of Echelon Corp.,
a networking company in San Jose, Calif., until 2009. He
served as the company’s executive chairman until his death.
After graduating summa cum laude from Rice, Oshman earned
his master’s and doctorate degrees at Stanford University while
working at Sylvania Corp. He received Rice’s Distinguished Alumnus
Award and was a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Ken OshmanJuly 9,1940–August 6,2011
RICE ENGINEERING 24
Anthony P. Austin, who graduated from Rice University
in May with degrees in electrical engineering and
mathematics, was among 40 students from across
the United States to be named Marshall Scholars.
The Marshall Scholarship, founded by an Act of the British
Parliament in 1953 to commemorate the humane ideals of
the Marshall Plan, allows
intellectually distinguished
American students to pursue
two years of graduate
study at any institution in
the United Kingdom.
Austin will use the
scholarship to complete
a Master of Advanced
Study degree in Part III of
the Mathematics Tripos
at Cambridge University
and a Master of Science
in pure mathematics at
Imperial College London.
“There is a lot of good mathematical history to be enjoyed
at Cambridge. After all, it has been home to some of the
world’s most brilliant scientists and mathematicians, from
Isaac Newton to G.H. Hardy. Getting to experience this
connection to the past will be a treat,” Austin said.
He is especially interested in studying mathematical analysis
and also has a substantial interest in signal processing.
As an undergraduate, he conducted research on the
mathematics behind the physics of vibrating strings.
He intends to pursue a Ph.D. in mathematics and to
become a university professor. At Rice, Austin was part
of an undergraduate engineering design team working
on an unmanned aerial vehicle to Mars, and received
the Outstanding Junior Award in electrical engineering
and the Hubert E. Bray Prize in mathematics. As a
Century Scholar at Rice, he has conducted research
with faculty members Mark Embree and Steve Cox in the
Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics.
“Aside from family members, the people who have had the most
profound influence on my development have been my teachers,
especially my calculus instructor from high school and several of
the professors at Rice. By becoming a teacher, I might be able to
do for someone else what they have done for me,” Austin said.
Marshall Scholarship
Five students, four of them in the George R. Brown School of Engineering, have received graduate fellowships to support their studies and research.
“These fellowships are highly sought after and often
come with opportunities for student internships at the
companies that sponsor them,” said Jan Odegard,
executive director of the Ken Kennedy Institute
for Information Technology at Rice University.
Yenny Chandra received the Ken Kennedy–Cray
Inc. Graduate Fellowship. Chandra is a third-year
graduate student in civil and environmental engineering
(adviser, Assistant Professor Ilinca Stanciulescu). Her
research focuses on developing numerical techniques
for simulating loss of stability in aerospace structures.
“The Ken Kennedy–Cray Graduate Fellowship fund was
established in 2007 as a tribute to both Ken’s long-time to
service to Cray as a member of our Board of Directors and
his pioneering work in compilers and parallel programming
models,” said Peter Ungaro, Cray president and CEO. “Ken
helped move our industry forward and we are very excited
that this award is providing continued support for deserving
students working in these same important areas of study.”
The Rice University Computer Science Club and
CSters–Schlumberger Fellowship was awarded to Xu
Liu, a second-year graduate student in computer science
(adviser, Professor John Mellor-Crummey), whose research
focuses on high-performance computing, especially
performance analysis for large parallel scientific programs
using novel software and hardware techniques.
Corporate-sponsored Graduate Fellowships
25 RICE ENGINEERING
Ana Watson, a graduate student in civil and
environmental engineering at Rice University, has
received a Ford Foundation Fellowship from the National
Research Council of the National Academies.
Her research focuses on energy production and consumption in
waste management. She studies the use of municipal solid waste
in various waste-to-energy
technologies for generating
electricity. This creates an
alternative renewable source of
fuel while simultaneously reducing
the amount of discarded waste.
Watson is a third-year Ph.D.
student in environmental
engineering. She earned her
B.S. in chemical engineering
in 2008 and her master’s
degree in environmental
engineering in 2009, both from
the University of Michigan.
To be eligible for a Ford Foundation Fellowship, a student
must display “superior academic achievement (such as grade
point average, class rank, honors or other designations), and
be committed to a career in teaching and research at the
college or university level.” As a Ford Fellow, Watson will
remain on the Rice campus while conducting her research.
Rahul Rekhi, a junior majoring in bioengineering, is
among the 275 American students named Goldwater
Scholars for 2011 by the Barry M. Goldwater
Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation.
Rekhi conducts research in the lab of Amina Qutub, assistant
professor in bioengineering. He founded the Rice Research
Mentorship Initiative last fall
and spent the summer as a
Baker Institute/Rice Center
for Engineering Leadership
intern in Washington, D.C.
He plans to earn a Ph.D. in
bioengineering, conduct
research in computational/
systems biology and teach
at the university level.
Goldwater scholars are
selected on the basis of
academic merit from a field
of mathematics, science
and engineering students who are nominated by the faculties
of colleges and universities nationwide. The Foundation
is a federally endowed agency honoring the late Barry M.
Goldwater, who represented Arizona in the U.S. Senate. The
organization’s goal is to help outstanding students pursue
research careers in mathematics, science and engineering.
Ford FellowshipGoldwater Scholarship
Corina Serediuc received the Rice University IEEE
Student Chapter and Women Excel–Schlumberger
Fellowship. Serediuc is a fourth-year electrical and
computer engineering graduate student (adviser,
Professor Behnaam Aazhang) who researches
cooperative wireless communications.
“The selection process is quite rigorous,” said Brian
Clark, a current Schlumberger Fellow. “Schlumberger
has been pleased to provide fellowships to top
students over the past decade. We value our
relationship with Rice University, as it is one of the top
science and engineering schools in the country.”
Awarded BP High-Performance Computing Graduate Fellowships were:
Rajesh Gandham, a second-year graduate student in
computational and applied mathematics (adviser, Associate
Professor Tim Warburton). His research focuses on developing
algorithms to solve partial differential equations of industrial scale,
using parallel architectures such as graphic processing units.
Kaijian Liu, a sixth-year graduate student in earth science
(adviser, Professor Alan Levander). His research in computational
seismology focuses on teleseismic imaging/inversion of the
geological structure beneath the western United States.
“BP has been engaged with the Kennedy Institute at Rice in a number
of ways, including development of HPC education and training
material, providing equipment to computer labs and co-hosting
workshops focused on high-performance computing in the industry,”
said Odegard. “The fellowships not only help our students but are
instrumental in highlighting the HPC career opportunities in the industry.”
RICE ENGINEERING 26
Three members of the George R. Brown School of Engineering faculty have won National
Science Foundation (NSF) Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards.
Jeffrey Jacot, assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University, adjunct professor at Baylor
College of Medicine and director of the Pediatric Cardiac Bioengineering Laboratory at the Congenital
Heart Surgery Service at Texas Children’s Hospital, researches the causes of congenital heart
disease, heart defects and the development of tissue-engineered stem cells for treating infants.
He earned a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Boston University in 2005 and holds a bachelor’s degree
from the University of Colorado. From 2005 to 2008, before joining the Rice faculty, Jacot conducted research
as a postdoctoral fellow in the Cardiac Mechanics Research Group at the University of California, San Diego.
Jamie Padgett, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, teaches courses in structural analysis
and bridge engineering in extreme events, and researches new ways to assess the vulnerability of transportation
infrastructure. Her aim is to more effectively protect bridges against such hazards as earthquakes and hurricanes.
Padgett earned a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree in
civil engineering from the University of Florida. She joined the Rice faculty in 2007 and was named one of the 14
“Best and Brightest New Faces” in engineering under the age of 30 by the National Engineers Week Foundation.
Lin Zhong, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and of computer
science, is researching ways to increase the capacity and efficiency of such devices
as “smart phones.” He investigates mobile and embedded system design and applications,
system power analysis and optimization, and human-computer interactions.
Zhong earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 2005, and holds bachelor’s and
master’s degrees in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University. He joined the Rice faculty in 2005.
CAREER awards support the research and educational development of young scholars the NSF expects
to become leaders in their fields. The grants are usually worth about $450,000 and are among the
most competitive awards from NSF, which gives only about 400 per year across all disciplines.
NSF CAREER Awards
NSF Graduate Research Fellowships Ten current and former Rice undergraduate students received National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships in
2011. They and the institutions where they are pursuing doctoral degrees in engineering are:
Frank Chen, electrical and computer engineering, Stanford University
Andres Goza, mechanical engineering, California Institute of Technology
Rachel Jackson, mechanical engineering, Stanford University
Mitchell Koch, computer science, Carnegie Mellon University
Kathleen Tina Li, statistics, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Stacey Skaalure, chemical and biomolecular engineering, University of Colorado Boulder
Taylor Stevenson, bioengineering, Cornell University
Laura Tanenbaum, bioengineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Citlali Tapia, civil and environmental engineering, Rice University
Catharine Shea Thompson, bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley
The fellowships recognize and support outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering and
mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in the U.S. and abroad. Fellows receive
a three-year annual stipend of $30,000, a $10,500 cost-of-education allowance for tuition and fees, a one-time international travel
allowance and the freedom to conduct research at any accredited U.S. of foreign institution of graduate education.
27 RICE ENGINEERING
Richard Tapia, a Rice University mathematician and longtime
champion of diversity in U.S. education, has received the
National Medal of Science from President Barack Obama.
The medal is the highest national honor given to U.S. scientists,
and is Tapia’s second award from the White House. In 1996,
he received the inaugural Presidential Award for Excellence in
Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring; that same
year he earned a presidential appointment to the National
Science Board, the nation’s highest scientific governing body.
Tapia joined the Rice faculty in 1970. He is a University
Professor, the highest academic rank at Rice, the Maxfield-
Oshman Professor in Engineering and a professor of
computational and applied mathematics. He is also director
of Rice’s Center for Excellence and Equity in Education.
The son of Mexican immigrants, Tapia grew up in Los
Angeles and was the first member of his family to attend
college. He excelled in math and science and earned
international acclaim for his research into numerical
optimization methods. For this work, Tapia became the first
Hispanic elected to the National Academy of Engineering,
in 1992. Tapia has authored or co-authored two books
and more than 100 mathematical research papers.
“I never thought that this would happen,” Tapia said. “I
am extremely honored. When I look at the list of the
mathematicians, computer scientists and statisticians that
have won the National Medal of Science, I’m totally humbled.”
Tapia has directed or co-directed more underrepresented
minority and women doctoral students in mathematics
than anyone in the country. Due partly to his efforts, Rice’s
Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics
has graduated more than double the national average of
minority and female Ph.D. students for more than a decade.
Tapia’s awards include the Lifetime Mentor Award from the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, the
Distinguished Service to the Profession Award from the Society
for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Distinguished
Public Service Award from the American Mathematical Society,
and the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society
for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in
Science. He is the first academician to be named Hispanic
Engineer of the Year by Hispanic Engineer Magazine.
Established in 1959, the National Medal of Science is
awarded by the president in recognition of outstanding
contributions to knowledge in the physical, biological,
mathematical, engineering, behavioral and social sciences.
Recipients are selected by a 12-member committee of
scientists and engineers appointed by the president and
administered by the National Science Foundation.
Tapia received the medal, which has been awarded to 468
people, at a White House ceremony in October. Earlier in the
year, Tapia won the 2011 DuPont Minorities in Engineering
Award from the American Society for Engineering Education
(ASEE), given to educators who motivate “underrepresented
students to enter and continue in engineering or engineering
technology curricula at the college or university level.”
National Medal of Science
RICE ENGINEERING 28
Farinaz Koushanfar, assistant professor in
electrical and computer engineering, was among
the 85 researchers named by President Barack
Obama to receive the Presidential Early Career
Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the highest
honor bestowed by the United States government
on science and engineering professionals in
the early stages of their research careers.
“Science and technology have long been at the core of
America’s economic strength and global leadership,”
President Obama said. “I am confident that these
individuals, who have shown such tremendous
promise so early in their careers, will go on to make
breakthroughs and discoveries that will continue
to move our nation forward in the years ahead.”
Koushanfar joined the Rice faculty in 2006 after
earning advanced degrees in electrical engineering and
computer science and in statistics from the University
of California, Berkeley. She has a master’s degree
from UCLA and a bachelor’s from Sharif University of
Technology in Tehran, both in electrical engineering.
Her research interests include design and optimization
of robust and secure systems, with a particular interest
in hardware-based security, digital rights management,
adaptive designs, emerging nano technologies, and
sensor-based embedded computations/systems.
Ten Federal departments and agencies nominate
scientists and engineers whose early accomplishments
show promise for assuring the preeminence of the
United States in science and engineering. President Bill
Clinton established the PECASE awards in 1996.
Koushanfar has received the Young Faculty Award from the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the central
research and development agency for the U.S. Department of
Defense. She also received the National Science Foundation
(NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award,
the NSF’s most prestigious honor for junior faculty members.
Koushanfar received the PECASE Award last
December in a ceremony in Washington, D.C.
PECASE Award
29 RICE ENGINEERING
Computer scientist Moshe Vardi has been named
a Distinguished Service Professor, one of Rice
University’s most prestigious faculty appointments.
Vardi came to Rice in 1993 and is the Karen Ostrum George
Professor in Computational Engineering and director of the
Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology. He was
named to the National Academy of Engineering in 2002 and
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010, and
also serves as editor-in-chief of the Association of Computing
Machinery’s flagship publication, Communications of the ACM.
“Moshe is a remarkable colleague who has been most
helpful in helping me understand our aspirations and
opportunities at Rice,” said Rice Provost George
McLendon. “I feel very lucky to work with him.”
Vardi chaired the Department of Computer Science from 1994
to 2002. He is a member of the Rice Faculty Senate and past
chair of the Rice Graduate Council. He has served on dozens
of faculty committees, including promotion and tenure, research,
library and intellectual property. He is a past member of the
University Council and past president of the Rice chapter of
the American Association of University Professors.
A renowned logician, Vardi earned his doctorate from the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1981 and is the author
or co-author of two books and more than 400 articles.
He was honored with the 2010 Outstanding Contribution
to ACM Award for his leadership, including chairing the
organization of an influential 2006 report on overseas job
outsourcing in the software industry. Vardi is a member of the
European Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europea.
Distinguished Service Professor
Kurt Kasper, faculty fellow in bioengineering, was named winner of the
2011 Young Investigator Award by the North American chapter of the Tissue
Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS).
Kasper’s research at Rice University’s BioScience Research Collaborative focuses
on devising new materials for the regeneration of orthopedic tissue, including
bone and cartilage. He is a principal investigator on a $1.7 million grant from the
National Institutes of Health to develop an injectable mix of polymers and adult stem
cells to promote growth of new cartilage in injured knees and other joints.
He is the author of more than 35 articles and contributed to the
preparation of a textbook on biomaterials for undergraduates.
“This award is a direct reflection of Kurt’s talents in taking fundamental research forward
by developing technologies and methods that have great potential for future clinical
use,” said Antonios Mikos, the Louis Calder Professor of Bioengineering, Chemical
and Biomolecular Engineering, director of the Center for Excellence in Tissue
Engineering, and director of the J.W. Cox Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering.
Kasper earned his Ph.D. in bioengineering from Rice in 2006 and conducted
postdoctoral research in the Mikos lab at Rice before becoming a faculty
member in 2008. The TERMIS award will be presented to Kasper at its annual
conference and exposition to be held in Houston December 11-14.
TERMIS Young Investigator Award
RICE ENGINEERING 30
The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) elected
Lydia E. Kavraki, the Noah Harding Professor of Computer
Science and professor of bioengineering, a 2010 Fellow.
She was among the 41 members honored for advancing
fundamental knowledge of computer science and innovations
in industry, commerce, entertainment and education. The ACM
cited Kavraki’s contributions to robotic motion planning and
applications of information science in computational biology.
Kavraki holds a joint appointment at Baylor College of
Medicine and is author of more than 140 papers on such
topics as robotics and computer science, computational
biology, bioinformatics and metabolic network analysis.
Kavraki is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of
Artificial Intelligence, the American Institute for Medical and
Biological Engineering, and World Technology Network. She
earlier received the ACM’s Grace Murray Hopper Award, a
National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the IEEE
Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career
Award. She is a Sloan Fellow. She won the Duncan Award
for excellence in research and teaching at Rice in 2004.
Kavraki earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science
from the University of Crete and a Ph.D. from Stanford
University, also in computer science, in 1995.
Dan Mittleman and Ray Simar have been elected fellows of the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for 2011.
“This is great honor for Dan and Ray,” said Behnaam Aazhang,
J.S. Abercrombie Professor of Electrical and Computer
Engineering and department chair. “Their continuing contributions
to Rice, the department and students make them very
deserving of this important recognition from their peers.”
Mittleman, a professor, was cited for his “contributions to terahertz
radiation imaging, sensing and spectroscopy.” He joined the Rice faculty
in 1996 after holding a post-doctoral position at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories.
In 1994, Mittleman earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of
California, Berkeley. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America.
Simar, a professor in the practice, was recognized for “leadership
in digital signal processor architecture development.” He previously
worked at Texas Instruments where he was an industry fellow and
advanced architecture development manager. Simar earned a
master’s degree in electrical engineering from Rice in 1983, and has
been teaching and doing research in digital signal processing.
The IEEE has 385,000 members in 160 countries. Fellow designation
is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the
technical community as an important career achievement.
ACM fellow
IEEE fellows
Dave McStravick, Professor in the Practice of Mechanical Engineering,
has been elected Congressional Fellow of the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and will spend a year in Washington,
D.C., working as a technical adviser on legislation in the U.S. Congress.
McStravick is one of two ASME Congressional Fellows in the nation’s
capital for 2011-12, and has been assigned to the office of U.S. Senator
Mark Begich (D–Alaska).
“I hope I can make a difference. It’s Washington, I know, and you can’t
change things overnight, but I hope to use my training and experience to
have a positive influence on developing a workable energy policy for this
country,” McStravick said. In addition, he would like to use his experience
in Washington to promote Rice University and greater Houston.
McStravick earned three degrees in mechanical engineering from Rice
University: a B.S. in 1965, a master’s degree in 1968 and a Ph.D. in 1972.
Before joining the Rice faculty, McStravick worked for more
than 20 years in research groups developing new products
for the oil industry, resulting in 15 U. S. patents. He worked
for the company that is now ExxonMobil, and later was a
research manager for Baker Packers, a division of Baker
Hughes, supplying equipment for major oil companies.
“Rice couldn’t have a better representative than Dave McStravick.
He’s been with the department for 15 years, and has been
responsible for a host of courses. Along with being a topnotch
engineer, Dave has always worked closely with students. Rice
is fortunate to have him,” said Andrew Meade, professor and
chair of mechanical engineering and materials science.
In 1993, McStravick founded Lynes Inc., a Houston consulting
firm. For 11 years he was president, and since 2004 has served
as vice president.
McStravick became a professor in the practice at Rice
in 2006. His teaching duties have included courses on
machine design, statics and dynamics, engineering design,
and lab courses on fluid and power systems. He has also
advised many student teams in year-long design projects.
“Concerns about the environment and global warming,”
McStravick said, “led me to my current research in wind turbine
energy production.”
McStravick is a licensed Professional Engineer in Texas and
has served as an expert forensic witness in more than 25 court
cases. McStravick is a member of the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers, the Society of Petroleum Engineers
and the American Society for Engineering Education.
ASME Congressional Fellow
Kenneth R. Cox, professor in the practice
in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering,
has been named a fellow of the American
Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Cox joined the Rice faculty in 2000, when he
became a senior lecturer and laboratory coordinator
in the department of chemical engineering. He
was named a professor in the practice in 2006.
Cox earned his Ph.D. in chemical engineering
from the University of Illinois in 1979. For 17
years he worked as a research engineer for the
Shell Development Company in Houston, and
for four years was an associate professor of
chemical engineering at the Ohio State University.
Cox’s research interests include colloidal
dynamics and stability, phase equilibria
of complex systems, applications of
molecular simulation, and thermodynamics
of electrolytes. For many years he has
served as the Rice AIChE student chapter
adviser. In this capacity he received the
C.M. and Demaris Hudspeth Award
for Student Life and Student Clubs.
The AIChE is the world’s largest
organization for chemical engineering
professionals with more than 40,000
members from 93 countries.
AIChE fellow
RICE ENGINEERING 32
v
Richard Baraniuk, the Victor E. Cameron Professor in Electrical and Computer
Engineering, was named winner of the 2011 Education Award by the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Signal Processing Society.
The award was presented to Baraniuk in May at the society’s international conference
on acoustics, speech and signal processing in Prague. The IEEE is the world’s largest
technical professional society, with more than 395,000 members in 160 countries.
Baraniuk joined the Rice faculty in 1993, and in 1999 founded Connexions, one of the
first initiatives to offer free, open-source textbooks via the Web. Connexions is among the
largest open education platforms, making available more than 17,000 modules (for instance,
textbooks and journal articles). It is used by more than 2 million people each month.
Baraniuk’s research on signal and image processing is applicable in a number of areas,
including image analysis and compression, medical imaging and machine learning.
Baraniuk earned his B.S. in 1987 from the University of Manitoba, his master’s
degree in 1988 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his Ph.D. in 1992
from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, all in electrical engineering.
IEEE 2011 Education Award
Tomasz Tkaczyk, assistant professor in
bioengineering and in electrical and computer
engineering, has been honored with the 2011
Paul F. Forman Engineering Excellence Award
by the Optical Society of America (OSA).
The award recognizes Tkaczyk’s work in
developing cost-effective optical imaging
platforms that provide multi-dimensional
biological data. The systems have broad use
in basic research and clinical diagnostics.
Tkaczyk received his Ph.D. in mechatronics from
Warsaw University of Technology in 2000. Since
joining the Rice faculty in 2007, he has combined
optics, opto-mechanics, electronics and software,
and biochemical materials to develop devices
producing high-quality images. Tkaczyk has
worked as lead investigator in developing a dual-
functioning endoscope used in cancer diagnosis.
Tkaczyk’s work was featured in OSA’s “Hot
Topics” and “Papers of the Year” in 2010. The
company Tkaczyk co-founded to commercialize
the technology, Rebellion Photonics, was
featured in Fortune magazine and selected
as winner of the Goradia Innovation Prize
by the Houston Technology Center.
Tkaczyk is author of more than 30 articles
and a textbook, Field Guide to Microscopy
(SPIE Publications, 2009). He has received
a John S. Dunn Research Foundation Award
to adapt endoscopic technologies and build
a high-resolution endoscope that images
the inner ear in vivo (2009), and a Becton-
Dickinson Professional Achievement Award
from the Association for the Advancement
of Medical Instrumentation (2010).
Tkaczyk received the Forman Award in
October at Frontiers in Optics, the OSA’s
annual meeting in San Jose, Calif.
OSA Engineering Excellence Award
33 RICE ENGINEERING
J im Young: Committed to engineering education
James F. Young, whose research focused on developing new
optical/photonic devices and who taught the popular Introduction
to Engineering Design class (fondly remembered as “Lego Lab”),
has retired from Rice University as professor of electrical and
computer engineering (ECE).
About five years ago Young switched the focus of his research to
engineering education, both undergraduate and K–12 levels,
prompted by the challenge of teaching “Lego Lab” to a mix of
engineering and non-engineering students.
“I greatly appreciated Jim’s leadership, energy and vision for the
undergraduate educational directions of the engineering school,”
said Sallie Keller, former William and Stephanie Sick Dean of the
George R. Brown School of Engineering. “Early in my term as
dean, Jim organized and led the Rice Engineering Education
Forum. The seeds of ideas from that forum helped spawn
development of the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen and the
Rice Center for Education Leadership.”
Young graduated with a B.S. and a master’s degree in electrical
engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
1965 and 1966, respectively, and with a Ph.D. in the same
discipline from Stanford University in 1970. He spent the next
twenty years on the Stanford faculty, until he joined the Rice
faculty in 1990.
Jeff Wisoff, future NASA space-shuttle astronaut, was a
graduate student in applied physics at Stanford when he met
Young in the mid-1980s.
“We were working on short-wavelength lasers. Jim was already
on the faculty and was one of the directors of research in the lab.
We were developing new vacuum ultraviolet and high intensity
laser sources. Jim was the guy who got things done in the lab,”
said Wisoff, who in 1986 earned his Ph.D. at Stanford and
joined the ECE faculty at Rice.
Wisoff was selected by NASA for its astronaut training program
in January 1990, just months before Young also came to Rice.
“I’m sorry to say we didn’t overlap at Rice, but Jim was a good
mentor when I was still a grad student.”
Young is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and the
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a member of Tau
Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, and a registered
professional engineer. He holds two patents and has authored
more than 75 articles and published proceedings.
Young supervised the research of more than 30 graduate students.
He was a founding member of the Rice University Outreach
Council and among the first senators elected to the Rice Faculty
Senate. He helped organize teaching workshops for faculty and
served as deputy speaker during the discussions over the
possible acquisition of the Baylor College of Medicine.
As emeritus professor Young plans to continue working in
education, developing a minor in engineering science for non-
engineering students, and training secondary-school teachers to
incorporate open-ended, team-based design projects into their
classes. He and his wife, Cecily, plan to continue their close
relations with Rice undergraduates. Both are active associates of
Martel College, and have been named Outstanding Associates of
Martel and Hanszen Colleges.
Maria Byrne, the coordinator of Martel College since it opened in
2001, has known the Youngs since they became college
associates in 2005.
“Jim immediately started getting involved. He would come to lunch
and get into conversations with the students right away. He was a
mentor to some of them but he was also their friend,” she said.
v
Jim Young works with K–12 teachers, showing them how
to introduce engineering concepts in the classroom.
RICE ENGINEERING 34
The Rice Engineering Alumni (REA) board of directors has announced its 2011 Outstanding Engineering Alumnus (OEA) and Outstanding Young Engineering Alumnus (OYEA).
Honored with the OEA is R. Norris Keeler ’51, who
graduated with a B.S. in chemical engineering and
went on to earn master’s and doctoral degrees at the
University of Colorado and the University of California,
Berkeley, respectively. Receiving the OYEA is Aaron
Hertzmann ’96, who graduated with a B.A. in
computer science and another in art and art history.
Keeler enlisted in the U.S. Navy and completed active
duty as missile guidance and electronics officer. In 1963,
he joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
as a member of the Equation of State and Property of
Materials Group, and become its division leader.
From 1970 to 1975, Keeler headed the laboratory’s physics
department, and from 1975 to 1977 was one of the six
principal advisers to the assistant secretary of the Navy
for research and development. He attained the rank of
captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve and served five tours as
a unit commanding officer. Since 1979, Keeler has worked
in the private sector as a consultant and as the principal
scientific adviser of Kaman Aerospace Corporation.
He has done research in foreign science and technology
assessments, nonacoustic antisubmarine warfare, physical
oceanography, submarine laser communications, mine
detection, cryogenic engineering, high pressure physics,
electro-optics, high pressure equation of state, lidar systems
and ocean surveillance. He holds more than 20 patents
in the area of airborne lidar and laser communications.
After graduating from Rice, Hertzmann, the OYEA, went on to get a
master’s degree in 1998 and a Ph.D. in 2001, both in computer science,
from New York University. Hertzmann was an acting assistant professor in
the computer science department at the University of Washington 2001-
2002. He joined the computer science department at the University of
Toronto in 2003, and has been as associate professor there since 2007.
In 2009-2010, Hertzmann was a visiting research scientist at
Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, Calif. His work focuses on
the response of digital characters to changing environments, with
potential applications in animated films and video games.
In 2009, Hertzmann won the Young Computer Science Researcher
Award from the Canadian Association of Computer Science. The
following year he received the Steacie Prize for Natural Sciences,
awarded annually to a young scientist or engineer who makes notable
contributions to research in Canada. The prize is administered by the
trustees of the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fund, a private foundation
for the advancement of Canadian science and engineering.
Each year the REA recognizes outstanding engineering alumni in two
categories. The Outstanding Engineering Alumnus award has been
presented annually since 1974. It recognizes alumni for careers of
exceptional achievement and community service. The Outstanding
Young Engineering Alumnus award was first presented in 1996. It
recognizes the achievements of engineers under the age of 40.
REA names outstanding alumni
Rice Engineering Alumni Association Outstanding Alumni Presentation and Reception
Friday, Nov. 4, 2011 4 to 5 p.m. McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall
Join us to honor the REA’s 2011 Outstanding Alumnus, R. Norris Keeler ’51, and Outstanding Young Alumnus, Aaron Hertzman ’96. After a brief presentation of honors and talk by each recipient, a reception will be held in Martel Hall.
35 RICE ENGINEERING
George Webb ’88, ’91, is president of the Rice Engineering Alumni (REA) and a patent lawyer who works in Houston and Austin. While a student at Rice, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering. Recently we had a conversation with George, asking him about the REA, its ongoing activities and his involvement in the organization:
How did you get involved in the REA?
“I participated in REA events for many years, but I first
joined the REA board in 2007. A member had resigned
and I was nominated to fill the rest of his term through
2009. I was put on the Social Committee, which was
a lot of fun, and the next year I became chair of it. I
was asked to stay on the board to serve a full four-year
term, which I’m doing now. In 2010 I had the honor of
being named president-elect, and now I’m president.”
What do you see as the mission of the REA?
“Our goal is to serve as a catalyst for collaboration and
lifelong connections between alumni and the school. In
practical terms, we do this by recognizing outstanding
achievements, supporting students, and facilitating
interactions among alumni, students, faculty and staff.
These programs build connections that are academic
and professional, as with the Oshman Engineering
Design Kitchen, but also social and informal. The
school and its alumni are all doing remarkable things,
and it benefits all of us when each reinforces the other.”
What are some of your organization’s
recent accomplishments?
“We are greatly expanding the REA student awards
program, one of our flagship activities. In addition to
the scholarships we’ve traditionally given for academic
merit, this year we created new REA awards for
student research, leadership and international service.
Between those funded directly by the REA and those
that are separately endowed but REA-administered, the
REA now gives out $61,000 in scholarships. This fall
we’re starting a program to provide grants for carefully
selected student initiatives and projects outside the
classroom. This idea first came from Angela Young,
the school’s executive director of development. We
hope to begin taking applications late this fall.”
Any plans for changing the way the REA works?
“We want to increase our engagement with alumni outside Houston.
Historically, our board membership has drawn mainly from Houston,
and most REA events have been held there. Today, of our 24
board members, four live outside the city—in San Antonio, Austin,
Philadelphia and Chile. We need our most energetic alumni to
serve on the board, and we want to make sure alumni throughout
the world stay engaged with the REA and the school.”
Anything else?
“We want to enhance our communications, especially our presence on the
web and through social media. Operationally, we receive terrific support
from the Alumni Affairs office, especially Associate Director Sean Harlow,
and from Ann Lugg, communications director for the school. But we
definitely have room to grow in making sure that our message is timely,
consistent and complete in order to engage alumni most effectively.”
How are you getting along with the new dean of
the engineering school, Ned Thomas?
“Splendidly! Ned and I are both big baseball fans—I’m an Astros
season ticket-holder, and he’s a Red Sox fan from his days in
Boston. It just so happened that on the night of Ned’s first day at
Rice, July 1, the Astros hosted the Red Sox. So Ned and I went to
the game and had a great time. For the record, the Astros led most
of the way, but Boston rallied in the 7th inning to win it. Now we just
have to educate Ned that college baseball is really the pinnacle of
the sport, so that he follows the Owls with the same passion.”
Conversation with the president
RICE ENGINEERING 36
For a guy who arrived at Rice University in 1983
contemplating a career in aerospace engineering, Alex
Kazim ’87 has followed a long and circuitous path to
owning and operating an online news aggregator.
“One of the benefits of a Rice education is that it creates
engineers who are multifaceted. The world needs people
who can design software, but it also needs people who
can run a company or do venture capital,” said Alex Kazim,
founder and CEO most recently of Ongo, an online news
aggregator that pulls stories from leading news sources.
Kazim, a self-described “news junkie,” launched Ongo
in January 2011 with the help of $12 million in financing
from the Gannett Company, Inc., the New York Times
Company and the Washington Post Company.
“Ongo brings together stories from a lot of different
publications,” Kazim said. “They’re chosen by
professional editors, and people can access
it on the Web or on their mobile devices. It’s
comprehensive, it’s reliable and it’s convenient.”
The Rice alum and future business executive was born
in in 1965 in Port of Spain, Trinidad. His father was
an orthopedic surgeon; his mother, a fashion designer.
The family moved to Houston when Kazim was 16
years old. A family friend and Rice graduate suggested
that Kazim, with his interest in aerospace, might also
want to attend Rice, where the field was focused
largely in the mechanical engineering department.
“So that’s what I did, but right from the start I was
also interested in computers. Bill Wilson was a god
and very influential,” said Kazim, referring to William
Wilson, who served on the electrical and computer
engineering faculty from 1972 until his retirement in
2006. During the summers while studying at Rice,
Kazim got a job designing courseware for several Rice
departments and bought his first Macintosh computer.
With his degree in mechanical engineering from Rice,
Kazim moved without a job to California in 1988, but
soon was hired by Apple as a software developer.
He remained there until the economic downturn
in 1994, when he was laid off by the company.
“It was an amazing experience that helped me later. I
learned about software, sure, but I also learned a
lot about business, about how good businesses
can succeed in Silicon Valley,” Kazim said.
Next, with several fellow Rice graduates, Kazim
decided to go into business designing video games.
He co-founded and became the CEO of the game
company Ix Entertainment. In the wake of the popular
Macintosh game Myst, Kazim and his colleagues
launched Golden Gate, a “360-Degree Non-Linear
Graphical Treasure Hunt,” in January 1996.
“It was a good game for its time. It wasn’t as
big as Myst but it still shows up once in a while.
It sold about 10,000 copies,” Kazim said.
Next, Kazim joined eBay, the online auction
and shopping website founded in 1995. Two
years later, the company received $6.7 million
in funding from Benchmark Capital, a venture
capital company. When Kazim was hired in
1998, the company had 100 employees, about
a million users and revenues of $30 million in
the United States. It went public that year.
Kazim started at eBay as director of engineering and
became vice president of marketing and business
operations for PayPal, the eBay-owned online
payment company. During his tenure in that post,
revenue increased from $200 million to $700 million.
As senior vice president of new ventures, Kazim was
charged with developing eBay’s classifieds product
offerings worldwide. Finally, he served as president
of Skype, eBay’s internet communications company.
“I was at eBay for nine years, the most exciting
growth years of the company. That’s where I learned
most of what I know about business,” Kazim said.
After leaving eBay in 2006, Kazim founded
Tokoni Inc. with his wife, Mary Lou Song, who
was eBay’s third employee. It was a social story-
sharing site they thought of as a virtual “front
porch,” and it remained in business until 2010.
“Tokoni didn’t have a whole lot of traction. We
decided to give online journalism a try, and
that’s the impetus behind Ongo,” Kazim
said. “It’s a better place to read the news.
What unifies all the various ventures I’ve been
involved in is this marriage of business and
technology, which I still find fascinating.”
Kazim and his wife have two daughters and
a son, and live in California’s Bay Area.
Mastering the marriage of business and technology
37 RICE ENGINEERING
“One of the benefits of a Rice education is that it
creates engineers who are multifaceted.”
—Alex Kazim
The 2011 Rice Engineering Alumni Student Awards Picnic in April featured the presentation of awards to students and faculty:
The Buckley-Sartwelle Scholarship in EngineeringVictor Leyva, mechanical engineering and materials science (MEMS). Endowed by Jack Boyd Buckley ’48 and Helen Sartwelle Buckley ’44 in memory of their parents
The Bob Dickson Endowed PrizeMichael Heisel, MEMS. Endowed by H. deForest Ralph ’55 and his wife Martha, with additional funding from Dale Dickson Johnson and others
The Alan J. Chapman AwardRachel Jackson, MEMSEndowed by Melbern G. ’61 and Susan M. Glasscock ’62
The Thomas Michael Panos Family Engineering Students AwardMatt Fritze, MEMSEndowed by Michael Panos ’52 and his sister, Effie
The Harrianna Butler Siebenhausen Award in EngineeringAndrew Waters, computational and applied mathematics (CAAM). Endowed by C.H. Siebenhausen ’50 in honor of his wife, Harrianna Butler
The Ralph Budd Prize for Best Engineering ThesisMark Davenport, electrical and computer engineering (ECE)In memory of Ralph Budd
The James S. Waters Creativity AwardJeffrey Bridge, ECEEndowed in 1968 by an anonymous donor in honor of James S. Waters ’17
The Hershel M. Rich Invention AwardAntonios Mikos, Louis Calder Professor of Bioengineering (BIOE) and Professor of chemical and biomolecular Engineering (CHBE); Mark Wong and Simon Young of the University of Texas Dental Branch; F. Kurtis Kasper, faculty fellow in bioengineering; Patrick Spicer, Baylor College of Medicine doctoral student; James Kretlow and Meng Shi, post-doctoral fellows, BioEEndowed by Hershel M. Rich ’45, ’47 and his wife, Hilda
REA awards picnicOutstanding Senior: Jim Wang (Yangluo), CHBE and CAAM;
Distinguished Seniors: Eric Kim, BIOE; Aron Yu (Yingbo), ECE; Senior Merit Awards: Qing Hu, BioE; Michelle Conway, MEMS; Nicholas Hoeft, CHBE; Chun Wu, ECE; Maria (Marilu) Corona, CEE; Arjune Bose, CAAM
Outstanding Junior: Erin Walsh, CHBE
Distinguished Juniors: Aditya Kaddu, CHBE; John Stretton, MEMS; Junior Merit Awards: Vera Lam, CHBE; Richard Latimer, ECE; Andrew Owens, MEMS; Norman Truong, BIOE; Melanie Calzada, CEE; Amber Kunkel, CAAM
The Rice Engineering Alumni this year created three new awards to recognize student achievement:
Research Excellence Award: Benjamin Lu, BIOE
Leadership Excellence Awards: Matthew Stearns, CEE Georgia Lagoudas, BIOE
International Service: Yiwen Cui, BIOE
39 RICE ENGINEERING
Unless noted otherwise, for details of these and other events, visit the
Events link on the School of Engineering homepage: engr.rice.edu.
Ken Kennedy Institute for Information TechnologyIEEE Computer Society Ken Kennedy Award Lecture
David Kuck, Intel Fellow
November 3, 2011
Rice Center for Engineering LeadershipEngineering Houston’s Future Conference
Nov. 11-12, 2011rcel.rice.edu/EHF
Rice Center for Engineering LeadershipEngineering Elevator Pitch Competition
November 17, 2011
Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters Center (SSPEED)Advanced Coastal Models for Decision Makers and Engineers Symposium
December 7, 2011
Department of StatisticsMessages in Massive Data
Rob Tibshirani, Stanford University
January 23, 2012
Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology Distinguished Lecture
Limor Fix, Intel
January 24, 2012
Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology
Distinguished Lecture
Eric Horvitz, Microsoft Research
February 9, 2012
DeLange Conference VIIIThe Future of the Research University in a Global Age
February 27-28, 2012http://delange.rice.edu/
Department of Computational and Applied MathematicsFinite Element Rodeo
March 2-3, 2012
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular EngineeringLeLand Lecture
Mark Davis, Caltech
March 15, 2012
Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen2012 Design Showcase
April 12, 2012
Department of Electrical and Computer EngineeringAnnual Affiliates Meeting
April 18, 2012
Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters Center (SSPEED)Annual Conference
April 12-13, 2012
Department of StatisticsInterface 2012: 43rd Symposium on the Interface of Computing Science and Statistics
May 16-18, 2012
Department of StatisticsStochastic Processes in Systems Biology, Genetics and Evolution
August 15-18, 2012
Engineering Events
Events celebrating Rice’s centennial are scheduled througout the coming year. A link to the calendar is at centennial.rice.edu.
RICE ENGINEERING 40
par ting shot
Who is the little man seated beside the big machine? Can you identify
him, the building where he sits or when the anonymous photographer
captured him at his solitary post? As part of the upcoming Rice
Centennial Celebration, we ask readers to play detective and solve
the mystery. Send your answers to us at [email protected].
41 RICE ENGINEERING
credits
Rice Engineering Magazine is a production of the George R. Brown School of Engineering Office of Communications at Rice University.
Dean Edwin L. “Ned” Thomas
Associate deansJanice BordeauxGary MarfinRatna SarkarBart Sinclair
Editorial staffHolly BerettoPatrick Kurp Ann Lugg
DesignerDonald Soward
ContributorsHolly BerettoJade BoydDwight DanielsShawn HutchinsPatrick KurpMike Williams
PhotographyJeff FitlowTommy LavergneDonald Soward
Send comments or letters to the editor:Rice Engineering MagazineRice University MS 364P.O. Box 1892Houston, Texas 77251or email them to: [email protected]