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

Ming Tang

Better batteries: Rice researchers work to improve electric vehicles

Rice University researchers will contribute to a new project to make better batteries for electric vehicles. Rice materials scientist Ming Tang and his colleagues announced in July 2020 they will receive part of a $2.4 million grant from the United States Advanced Battery Consortium to develop low-cost, fast-charging batteries for vehicles. Learn More

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

Naomi Halas, Kyriacos Zygourakis and Pedro Alvarez

Superfund sites: Researchers study how toxic chemicals impact preterm births

A trio of Rice University professors and their labs are taking part in a five-year, $10 million Superfund Research Program grant awarded in May 2020 by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to study how toxic chemicals emanating from Superfund sites impact preterm births. Naomi Halas, Kyriacos Zygourakis and Pedro Alvarez are bringing their labs’ expertise to the Baylor College of Medicine-based Multiproject Research Center that also includes collaborators from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Alvarez is the Rice lead, co-principal investigator and co-director of the center. 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

Karl Ecklund
Karl Ecklund

American Physical Society Fellow

Karl Ecklund, a professor of physics and astronomy, was named a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). The society’s Division of Particles and Fields cited him “for leadership in high-precision particle-tracking detectors using pixel technology, and in the measurement of top- and bottom-quark properties in both e+e- and hadron collider experiments.”

Stay tuned for the next edition of Rice Research Review