In the News

Trustee Elsenhans to Be Shell U.S. Chief
Lynn Laverty Elsenhans ’78, a Rice University alumna and a member of the Rice Board of Trustees, has been named Shell Oil Company’s top executive in the United States, making her one of the highest-ranking women executives for a major company in Houston.

Elsenhans graduated from Rice with a bachelor’s degree in mathematical science and received an M.B.A. from Harvard in 1980 before joining Shell Oil Company.

At Rice, Elsenhans has served on the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management Council of Overseers, the Rice University Fund Council, the Alumni Nominations Committee, and the Nanotechnology Leadership Committee. She has been class chair several times, led the Annual Fund Campaign twice and has served as treasurer for the Association of Rice Alumni (ARA). In 2000, she and her husband, John, also a Rice alumnus, established the Lynn Laverty Elsenhans Scholarship for students majoring in the mathematical sciences.

Bretthauer Named DHL President, COO
Rice alumna and president of the Association of Rice Alumni Vicki Whamond Bretthauer ’79 has been named president and chief operating officer of DHL Airways Inc. Previously the interim chief executive officer and senior vice president of operations, Bretthauer joined DHL Airways in 2001 after holding operational and administrative positions at United Airlines and Reno Air.

Bretthauer graduated from Rice with a bachelor’s degree in managerial studies and earned an M.B.A. from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School in 1982. In addition to heading the ARA, Bretthauer is an alumni interviewer, chair of the Chicago Area Group, and a solicitor for reunion class giving.

McIntire Chosen for National Leadership Program
Mary McIntire, dean of the School of Continuing Studies, has been chosen to participate in the American Issues Forum of Leadership America, a national women’s leadership organization. The forum is a yearlong, three-city program designed to involve women leaders in discussion and analysis of critical national and international issues.
McIntire was the founding dean of Continuing Studies and also a founding member of Texas Women in Higher Education and the past president of the Texas Association of Community Service and Continuing Education. McIntire earned her Ph.D. in English and American literature from Rice in 1975 and is a recipient of a Meritorious Service Award from the Association of Rice Alumni.

Barrera Earns Presidential Mentoring Award
The White House has recognized Enrique Barrera with the prestigious Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. An associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, Barrera was honored for wide-ranging efforts to recruit inner-city schoolchildren into science and mathematics and to mentor undergraduate and graduate minority students in engineering. Through his Materials Magic Show, Barrera has encouraged hundreds of grade school students—primarily in Houston’s inner-city schools—to develop a love of science and mathematics. The award includes a $10,000 grant, which Barrera plans to use to enhance the show.

Curl Given Rank of ‘University Professor’
One of Rice University’s most distinguished and well-respected faculty members, Robert F. Curl Jr., has been named to the rank of University Professor, the institution’s highest academic title. Curl, the Kenneth S. Pitzer–Schlumberger Professor of Natural Sciences and professor of chemistry, joins Rice president Malcolm Gillis and faculty members Ken Kennedy, Neal Lane, and Richard Smalley as the only members of Rice’s academic community to hold this prestigious appointment, which entitles the holder to teach in any department at Rice. Curl, who received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Rice in 1954, has taught at the university for 45 years. He, Smalley, and Harold Kroto of the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, helped usher in the age of nanotechnology with the discovery in 1985 of fullerenes, which earned the trio the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Hulet Elected AAAS Fellow
Randy Hulet, the Fayez Sarofim Professor of Physics and Astronomy, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the nation’s oldest and most illustrious learned society. Hulet is one of 187 new fellows elected by society members on the basis of preeminent contributions to their disciplines. Hulet specializes in studying atoms that have been cooled to just billionths of a degree above absolute zero.

Khabashesku Receives Top Russian Honor
Rice researcher Valery Khabashesku, a faculty fellow in the Department of Chemistry, has been awarded the State Prize of Russia, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the Russian government and one of the world’s most prestigious scientific honors. He was honored for his groundbreaking research on the chemistry of silicon, germanium, and tin.

Landis Earns Two Top Research Awards
The innovative theoretical work of Chad Landis has garnered two of the nation’s top research awards for young faculty. Landis, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, has won the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award and the Office of Naval Research’s Young Investigator Award. Both awards recognize the work of young faculty, and each includes a substantial monetary reward—a five-year, $400,000 grant from the NSF and a three-year $300,000 grant from the navy.

Landis’s primary research involves tools and techniques that engineers can use to optimize the design of piezoelectric devices, which respond mechanically—contracting or expanding—when an electric field is passed through them.

Prestigious 2003 Guggenheim Fellowships Go to Scuseria, Zha
Focusing on topics of computational nanotechnology and the recent transformation of China, Rice’s Gustavo Scuseria and Jianying Zha have been selected as 2003 Guggenheim Fellows. They were among 184 winners selected from this year’s field of more than 3,200 applicants.

Scuseria, the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry, was one of only four chemists selected. His research group is well-known for its pioneering efforts to develop tools that chemists and physicists use to create highly accurate models of the electronic structure of very large molecular systems.

Zha, a writer and visiting scholar/researcher affiliated with Rice’s Asian Studies Program and the Transnational China Project at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, received her Guggenheim Fellowship to collect data on China’s emerging middle class. Some of the research will be applicable to the Transnational China Project’s study of how civil society is marketed in China.

Smith Honored by AAHE for Public Service
The Black Caucus of the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) has selected Rice associate provost Roland Smith as a co-recipient of the 2003 AAHE Black Caucus Exemplary Public Service Award. AAHE presents the award to people whose lives and careers have demonstrated a commitment to advancing the welfare of blacks in higher education.

Smith is responsible for educational outreach, recruitment, and retention issues at the university. He also works to advance Rice’s commitment to cultural inclusiveness, serves on the Graduate Council, coordinates the Mellon Undergraduate Fellows Program, and chairs the Educational Outreach Council.

Kavraki in the Brilliant 10
Lydia Kavraki, associate professor of computer science, was named as one of Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10” scientists. Kavraki represented the computer science field, and her work on looking for ways to model biological molecules to aid in the hunt for new medicines was featured.

Three Owls Inducted into Texas Science Hall of Fame
Three members of the Rice community were among eight new inductees into the Texas Hall of Fame for Science, Mathematics, and Technology last month.

Norman Hackerman, Rice president emeritus and distinguished professor emeritus of chemistry, has dedicated his life to research and education. His research interests dealt principally with the chemistry and physics of surfaces. He has been active in the National Science Board, American Chemical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council, and many other organizations, advisory committees, boards of technical societies, and government agencies, including the President’s Scientific Advisory Committee and the National Science Foundation. He received the National Medal of Science from President Clinton and the Vannevar Bush Award, the National Science Board’s highest honor.

Ronald Sass, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and professor of chemistry, has conducted research on the role of methane as an active atmospheric gas, and his environmental research takes him frequently to Asia, where he has helped foster a more professional and conducive atmosphere for the practice of science. His environmental studies have led him to take on consulting roles for the United Nations and the Environmental Protection Agency, and he has received a Guggenheim Fellowship at Cambridge University and was a National Research Senior Fellow with NASA. As a teacher, Sass has won numerous awards and honors. He currently is chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and has been co-director of the Center for Education since its founding in 1988.

Albert Collier ’33 is a retired marine biologist who worked for several federal agencies and taught at Florida State University and the University of Arizona between 1933 and 1982. He was a key player in a 1946 investigation of the role of petroleum production in increased Gulf Coast oyster mortalities, during which he and the other investigators discovered a new parasite and its potential damage to oysters.

Assistant Professors Damle and Hassett Garner Sloan Fellowships
Two Rice faculty members recently were awarded research fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. They are Kedar Damle, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy who studies condensed matter theory, and Brendan Hassett, the Edgar Odell Lovett Assistant Professor of Mathematics who studies algebraic geometry and number theory. Damle and Hassett were among 116 young faculty members from other top universities across the country who were awarded fellowships this year. Recipients are awarded $40,000 during the next two years.

Eight Become Professors Emeriti
Having served a cumulative total of more than two centuries at Rice, eight faculty members joined the ranks of professors emeriti this year: John Ambler, professor of political science; Chandler Davidson, the Radoslav Tsanoff Professor of Public Affairs and professor of sociology and of political science; Philip Davis, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Linguistics; Reese Harvey, the Edgar Odell Lovett Professor of Mathematics; Robert Jump, professor of electrical and computer engineering and of computer science; William Murray, associate professor of voice; Dale Spence, professor of kinesiology; and Edith Wyschogrod, the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought.

—Reported by B. J. Almond, Jade Boyd, Margot Dimond, Janelle Dupont, Jennifer Evans, and Greg Okuhara