Rice Research Review

2020 was an exciting year for research at Rice. We continued work in several important areas, announced some exciting new projects and joined forces across campus and with our community partners to help tackle COVID-19.

Yousif Shamoo

Welcome to the first edition of Rice Research Review. This annual online publication highlights a sampling of Rice University’s research pursuits and accomplishments over the previous year. View more.

FOCUS

Pathbreaking Research: Rice’s Response to COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a bright light on the role research plays in understanding some of our modern world’s greatest challenges. As the virus swept across the globe last year, Rice University joined forces with researchers across campus and the Greater Houston community to help end the pandemic and prepare for similar outbreaks in the future.

AT LARGE

IN BRIEF

Paul Padley and Karl Ecklund

Higgs study: Rice physicists probe nature’s elemental secrets

In July 2020, Rice physicists received a $1.3 million grant from the Department of Energy to bolster the university’s ongoing research at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The grant to Paul Padley and Karl Ecklund, both professors of physics and astronomy and longtime core members of the LHC team, is a continuation of funding (now totaling $4.5 million) to Rice researchers who helped build one of the collider’s key components and study the resulting data about the elementary particles it finds. Learn More

Jeremy Fox, the Shatto Endowed Chair of Economics at Rice

Matching games: Economist looks at how relationships form, impact the world

The formation of relationships — everything from business to romantic partnerships — and how they impact the world is the focus of a new Rice University research project funded in September 2020 by the National Science Foundation (NSF). "Repeated Matching Games: An Empirical Framework” received a $264,000 grant from the NSF. Jeremy Fox, the Shatto Endowed Chair of Economics at Rice, is the principal investigator for the three-year research project. Learn More

Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment Center (NEWT)

NEWT: Work continues on next-generation water treatment systems

In October 2020, the Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment Center (NEWT), a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center with its headquarters at Rice University, earned a five-year renewal to continue its work on next-generation water treatment systems. The multi-institution, multidisciplinary center under the direction of Rice environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez is a partnership between academia, industry and government to produce transformational technology as well as engineers primed to lead the global economy. The NSF award is for $16.5 million. Learn More

BY THE NUMBERS

Rice University is one of the nation’s leading research universities. With just over 7,500 undergraduate and graduate students, Rice produces $172 million in sponsored projects annually. These projects span a broad spectrum of academic areas and work toward solving pressing problems across the globe.

By The Numbers
Awards
Awards
2020 Research Funding
Research Funding
Top Five Federal Awards
Awards
National Academy Memberships
National Academy Membership
Active National Science Foundation Career Awards
Active National Science Foundation Career Awards
National University Rankings
National Universities Ranking

ACCOLADES

W. Caleb McDaniel
W. Caleb McDaniel

Pulitzer Prize for History

Caleb McDaniel, associate professor and chair of the Department of History, won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for History for “Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America,” an account of Henrietta Wood, a woman who twice survived enslavement and eventually triumphed in a historic court case against one of the men responsible for her captivity.

Stay tuned for the next edition of Rice Research Review