In the News

Halas Group Wins $5M Award from DOD

A team of Rice researchers has won a Department of Defense (DOD) grant to invent next-generation tools for the modern bioengineer and life scientist that will rapidly identify proteins and viruses in incredibly minute detail.

Lead by principal investigator Naomi Halas, the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, the team plans to use the $5 million grant to develop a multimodality spectroscope for nanoscale optical imaging of the structure and function of peptides, proteins, and viruses in their native environments. The tools will be applied in the emerging field of plasmon-based nanophotonics, which can focus light far below the diffraction limit of conventional optics and has the potential to resolve protein structure at the single-molecule level. The research also will enable the development of new tools with exceedingly broad applications, ranging from molecular-level diagnosis of disease to chemical detection and biodetection for homeland security.

The project builds on the infrastructure of the Rice Laboratory for Nanophotonics. New graduate courses will be developed that address the theoretical and experimental aspects of nanoscale instrument component design and fabrication and, eventually, instrument use for life scientists.

Halas’s collaborators are Peter Nordlander, professor of physics and astronomy and in electrical and computer engineering; Jason Hafner, assistant professor of physics and astronomy and of chemistry; Bruce Johnson, senior faculty fellow in chemistry; Jeffrey Hartgerink, assistant professor of chemistry; Cecilia Clementi, the Norman Hackerman–Welch Young Investigator Assistant Professor of Chemistry; Kevin Kelly, assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering; Robert Raphael, the N.T. Law Assistant Professor in Bioengineering, and Gennady Shvets, assistant professor of physics at the University of Texas.

Chemistry’s Hartgerink Earns Coveted Searle Grant

Rice chemist Jeffrey Hartgerink is on the hunt for a beauty secret. The assistant professor of chemistry recently was awarded a coveted Searle Scholar grant to help fund his next three years of studies into methods of preparing synthetic collagen.

Collagen is one of the primary components of skin, muscle, and other bodily tissues—even bone. Yet chemists cannot synthesize natural collagen because it contains about 10 times the amount of amino acids than can be strung together using today’s state-of-the-art methods.
Hartgerink’s research group is trying to synthesize much shorter chains of amino acids that have a tendency to align together into long, collagen-like chains. So far, they have succeeded in creating nanoscale structures that are made from the same amino acids as collagen and that have the same triple-helical structure of collagen. They’ve also managed to form these strands into larger fibrils of collagen.

The grant will allow Hartgerink’s group to focus on refining the methods it already has developed and attempt to form large macroscopic structures out of the fibrils. In addition, the group already is working with researchers in the United Kingdom who are conducting tests to find out how well adult stem-cell cultures grow in gels of the synthetic collagen fibrils.

The Searle grant, available to selected academic institutions to support the independent research of outstanding young faculty, is worth $80,000 per year for the next three years. The program was established in 1980 to support research in medicine, chemistry, and the biological sciences.

Kavraki Elected AIMBE Fellow

Lydia Kavraki, associate professor of computer science and bioengineering, has been elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows.

Kavraki’s membership recognizes her contributions in bioinformatics and, in particular, the development of pioneering robotics-engineered methods for the study of biomolecular motion, biomolecular interactions, protein folding, and drug discovery.

Kavraki develops mathematical algorithms and programming techniques that can be used to direct the movement of robots. By drawing analogies between robots and molecules, she has adapted her robotics approaches to develop next-generation protein-modeling software that accounts for the movement of molecules when they interact with each other. This dynamic biomolecular-modeling software can be used by biomedical researchers to analyze receptor–ligand interactions, protein folding, protein docking, and drug design.

AIMBE serves as an umbrella group for the field of medical and biological engineering and aims to promote awareness of the field and monitor public policy on related issues. Its fellows represent the top 2 percent of professionals in the field of medical and biological engineering.

Natelson Receives Prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship

Douglas Natelson, assistant professor of physics and astronomy and in electrical and computer engineering, has been awarded a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship.

The fellowship carries with it a grant of $40,000, which may be used in a largely unrestricted manner, so fellows are free to pursue whatever lines of research are of most interest to them.

Natelson’s research is aimed at better understanding the physics of electronic conduction at the nanometer scale. His work is of fundamental importance for engineers and nanotechnologists interested in developing ever-smaller computer components based on molecular electronics. It also could play a role in developing hypersensitive detectors for healthcare and security applications that could scan samples as small as a single molecule.

The fellowship, awarded annually, is intended to enhance the careers of the nation’s best young faculty members who show exceptional promise in contributing to the advancement of knowledge. This year, 116 fellowships were awarded to those engaged in research in the areas of chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics.

O’Malley Earns Young Investigator Award

Robotics researcher Marcia O’Malley has been recognized with one of the nation’s top awards for young faculty, the Office of Naval Research’s Young Investigator Award. O’Malley, assistant professor in mechanical engineering and materials science, is director of the Mechatronics and Haptic Interfaces Lab, which studies the use of robotic devices in virtual and remote environments.

The term “haptic” refers to the perception of touch, and a lot of the lab’s work involves the design and testing of force-feedback systems that allow people to “feel” their environment while they are in virtual reality. For example, a user pushing against a wall in a virtual environment can feel a hard surface, thanks to force-feedback systems that push on the user’s hands or arms.

The navy funding will allow O’Malley’s team to create techniques that will improve training simulators by taking advantage of the display device’s ability to go beyond the recreation of reality and use haptic cues to guide the trainees’ response. These cues could warn trainees that they are about to do something dangerous, for instance, or they could subtly guide the user into performing the desired action in a given situation.

The Office of Naval Research’s Young Investigator Program seeks to attract the brightest young academic scientists and engineers into the Navy’s research program. The program targets those who have received their doctorate within the past five years and demonstrated exceptional promise for creative research.

Tapia Collects Multiple Honors

Rice mathematician Richard Tapia, who is nationally known for his efforts to recruit underrepresented minorities into science and engineering, has collected a series of honors from across the nation.
Tapia, the Noah Harding Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics, received an honorary degree from Carnegie Mellon University, and he was honored by the alumni association of his alma mater, the University of California at Los Angeles, with the 2004 UCLA Award in Community Service.

The honorary degree is Tapia’s second in six months. He received the other in December from the Colorado School of Mines. He also earned the Distinguished Public Service Award from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and was named one of the 50 Most Important Hispanics in Technology and Business for 2004 by Hispanic Engineer and Information Technology magazine.

Tapia serves as associate director of graduate studies and as director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education. He is a founding member of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), the premier professional organization for Hispanic and Native American scientists.

Tarlov a Leader in Enhancing Texas Education for All Children

Alvin Tarlov, the Sid Richardson and Taylor and Robert H. Ray Senior Fellow in Health Policy at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, has been honored with the 2004 Jeannette Watson Texas Parents as Teachers Advocacy Award for his leadership in children’s education issues.

As executive director of the Baker Institute’s Texas Program for Society and Health, Tarlov led a collaboration among Rice, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and the Texas Early Childhood Education Coalition to identify the determinants of successful child development and to formulate public policies to enhance success in schooling and, later in life, in family, work, citizenship, and health. The product of the collaboration is a collection of 45 integrated public policies titled “The Texas Plan.”

The award is named for native Texan Jeannette Watson in recognition of her pioneering work and lifelong advocacy for children’s developmental issues. Texas Parents as Teachers is an affiliate of Parents as Teachers National Center Inc.

Four Become Faculty Emeriti

With a cumulative total of more than 130 years at Rice under their belts, four faculty members joined the ranks of professors emeriti this year: Stephen Baker, professor of physics; John Polking, professor of mathematics; Anne Schnoebelen, the Joseph and Ida Kirkland Mullen Professor of Music; and Madeleine Alcover, professor of French.

Bradley a Shining Star in Registrar’s Office

For successfully managing requests from faculty and staff for available classrooms and assigning those rooms, Alicia Bradley has been awarded with the Distinguished Employee Award.

Bradley, a room reservation assistant in the Office of the Registrar, has worked at Rice for more than three years. The Distinguished Employee Award is given by the human resources department on behalf of the university to recognize employees who perform above and beyond their job description to the benefit of the Rice community.

Fondren’s Oster Honored for Exemplary Service

Karen Oster, a Fondren Library computer programmer who maintains the database controlling the online catalog, received this year’s Shapiro Library Staff Innovation Award.

Oster’s efforts to keep the online catalog available 24 hours a day were among her achievements that lead to the honor. The Shapiro Award recognizes a library staff member who has developed an innovative program to provide library services at Rice or who has shown exemplary service to the university community.

Since joining the Fondren staff in 2001, Oster, a senior Sirsi database administrator, has managed several major upgrades to the Sirsi software, the integrated library system that includes the online catalog. When Fondren changed the interface through which library users access the catalog from a DOS-based program to a Web-based program, Oster was responsible for the programming that ensured the new interface could access the database correctly.

Oster also helped implement a new underlying database structure known as Oracle, which serves as a back-up system for the online catalog.

Hsu, Carlson, Kumari Promoted to Associate Dean

Three long-standing assistant deans in the School of Continuing Studies have been promoted to the level of associate dean: Edie Carlson, Laura Ling Hsu, and Siva Kumari.

Carlson has worked in the school since 1978 and was named assistant dean in 1991. She directs professional development programs in certified financial planning, financial analysis, and treasury management, as well as in personal development courses. She began the school’s program for teachers of advanced placement courses in 1995 and also directed the Rice University Publishing Program for nine years.

Hsu has worked in the School of Continuing Studies since 1984. She develops public noncredit courses in the cultural arts and has directed the Institute for Human Resource Education since 1996, which has become the largest producer of certified professionals in human resource management in Texas and is one of the three largest university programs of its kind in the country.

Kumari has been with Continuing Studies since 2000 and was named assistant dean that same year. She directs teacher professional development programs, including the Advanced Placement Summer Institute, which has become one of the largest in the country, the Workshop for High School Teachers of the Gifted and Talented, and the Advanced Placement Digital Library (http://apdl.rice.edu). Kumari also directs the Rice Technology Education Center, which offers information technology courses for the public.

Impact Awards Honor Those Who Have Made Their Mark on Rice

One Rice faculty member and two staff members have been recognized with Women’s Resource Center Impact Awards: Nancy Elliott, department coordinator for facilities and engineering; Brett Ashley Leeds, associate professor of political science; and Ken Nipe, Rice police officer. The honors are given annually to men and women at Rice who demonstrate service to the campus and community, show involvement and participation in student life and activities at Rice and beyond, work to make a positive impact by raising awareness of women’s issues, and serve as role models in the empowerment of women.

— Reported by B. J. Almond, Jade Boyd, Jennifer Evans,
Lindsey Fielder, and Carol Hopkins