Rice Magazine 2

Rice Magazine • No 1 • 2008 1

14 | Children’s Campus • 11| Work of Heart • 4| Environmental Puzzles • 41| Emmy Winner

BROCHSTEIN PAVILION TAKES OFF

22 THE CENTENNIAL CAMPAIGN32 GLOBAL HEALTH36 RICE’S HIGH -TECH ADVANTAGE44 THE TEXAS BOWL

Hot CoffeeHot CoffeeCool Conversation

Contents6

On the cover: Build it and they will come. Brochstein Pavilion has become a favorite campus gathering place.

19 Rice students are taking the brew-master’s art to new — and healthier — levels with BioBeer.

11 Rice engineers helped develop the world’s fi rst artifi -cial heart, and once again they’re going straight to the heart of the matter.

13 You might have more in common with the microscopic, sea-dwell-ing Trichoplex than you imagine.

9 Find your path the high-tech way with Rice’s new interactive online maps.

13 ‘Smart’ shock absorbers are built to take the quake.

42 How they collected “things in which we believe.”

10 Biological processes promise environmen-tally friendly meth-ods for producing pharmaceuticals.

38 Take a journey through Rice’s own “Fantastic Voyage.”

Contents10 Biological processes

Contents1

ContentsContents6

Contents

levels with BioBeer.

14 Continued growth marks the Rice campus.Continued growth marks the Rice campus.

Rice Magazine • No. 2 • 2009 1

22 A Second Century of No Upper Limit Much has changed since Rice University

opened its doors in 1912, but the ideals that have made Rice a powerhouse in education and research continue to drive its endeavors.

B y D a v i d W . L e e b r o n

24 Rice: Living Its Vision For The Second Century

With the launch of the Centennial Campaign, Rice strengthens its legacy and looks toward the future and its second century.

B y C h r i s t o p h e r D o w

27 Three Big Ideas The Centennial Campaign distills Rice’s future

into three main areas.

28 A Conversation Centennial Campaign co-chairs Susanne M.

Glasscock and Robert B. Tudor discuss what’s important for Rice and how the campaign will move the university forward.

32 Global Health: Taking the Lead in Education and Prevention

Solutions to the world’s most pressing health issues won’t come from technology alone. They’ll be driven by people with vision — people like Rebecca Richards-Kortum and her intrepid band of undergraduates.

B y D e b o r a h J . A u s m a n

36 Turning Rice Research into Reality The Offi ce of Technology Transfer is the

place where Rice-born technologies become real-world products.

B y M i k e W i l l i a m s

Students20 Young heart patients often

face a lifetime of operations to replace faulty valves. But not if Elizabeth Stephens has anything to say about it.

18 And the Austrian Mathematical Society’s award for best master’s thesis goes to. ...

18 One of the world’s largest producers of oil and gas and alternative energy knows how critical Rice graduates are to its business.

Arts39 Alert! Giant Styrobot and mutant

graphics take over Rice Gallery!

40 Life’s ambiguities and the inevitability of change mark fi lmmaker’s award-winning work.

41 Emmy-winning cinematographer found inspiration at Rice.

Bookshelf42 Poems of time, distance and

the contours of the American Southwest

43 When navigating unknown terrain, you need a good guidebook, and few know the Middle East like Edward P. Djerejian.

Sports44 Did you say, ”Texas Bowl?” The Owls say, ”Bowl ‘em over!”

48 These two Rice Owls never met a pass they didn’t like.

Features

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2 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine

Is my dictionary trying to tell me some-thing? Immediately following the word “campaign” is “campanile.” It’s a serendip-itous juxtaposition considering that Rice is embarking on an extraordinary fund-raising campaign to ensure its legacy in the century to come, and the “Campanile” yearbook represents the personal legacy of alumni who have attended the university.The Centennial Campaign is the boldest fundraising challenge in Rice’s history — the plan is to raise $1 billion by June 30, 2013, half of which was raised before the campaign’s public launch on Nov. 7, 2008. You can read about the campaign in this issue, from President David W. Leebron’s call to ac-tion, to campaign co-chairs Susie Glasscock and Bobby Tudor’s reasons for spearheading the effort, to the specifi c ways Rice is approaching the future with targeted initiatives that will both strengthen and enhance the university and its programs.

You’ll also read a lot of reasons to participate and support the campaign, and they’re good rea-sons. But look just as closely at the other stories in this issue — the stories about the researchers and students at Rice who are making a real difference in lives of people like you and me the world over. When you get down to it, people are what the Centennial Campaign is really all about.

There’s no better place to start than the feature titled “Global Health: Taking the Lead in Education and Prevention,” which tells how students in Rebecca Richards-Kortum’s Rice 360° program are generating ideas and using a hands-on approach to create technologies that will help people in developing countries prosper in a safe and healthy environment. Or read about Elizabeth Stephens,

whose work to grow replacement heart valves from a patient’s own tissue is showing great promise. And speaking of hearts, you might know that Rice engineers had a hand in developing the fi rst artifi cial heart pump, but what you might not have heard is that a new generation of Rice engineers is working to create the smallest and most effi cient heart pump yet.

There’s much more, including beer that contains anticancer agents, “smart” earthquake shock absorbers for buildings and pharmaceuticals manufactured using environmentally friendly

production techniques. These stories illustrate just a small fraction of the valuable work going on at Rice, and they’re exactly the sorts of efforts in which Rice students and researchers excel and the kinds of things that the Centennial Campaign will help foster in the university’s second century.

But life — even at Rice — isn’t all work and no play. Be sure to visit the Rice Web site at www.rice.edu for new interactive maps and amazing virtual tours that give you full 360° views of a num-ber of campus locations. For the full 360° effect, click on an image and drag the mouse around to get a dizzying view of how stunning this campus and its surroundings are. And after you recover from your vertigo, go further to see how the campus is expanding and to check out familiar haunts.

And whatever you do, don’t neglect our coverage of the exciting Texas Bowl — the culmination of one of the Owls’ most outstanding football seasons ever — and the record-breaking efforts of two players who helped spearhead the effort.

Go Owls!

Rice Magazine

Vol. 65, No. 2

Published by the Offi ce of Public Affairs

Linda Thrane, vice president

EditorChristopher Dow

Editorial DirectorTracey Rhoades

Creative DirectorJeff Cox

Art DirectorChuck Thurmon

Editorial StaffMerin Porter, staff writer

Jenny West Rozelle, assistant editor

PhotographersTommy LaVergne, photographer

Jeff Fitlow, assistant photographer

The Rice University Board of Trustees

James W. Crownover, chairman ; J.D. Bucky Allshouse; D. Kent Anderson; Keith T. Anderson; Teveia Rose Barnes; Alfredo Brener; Vicki Whamond Bretthauer; Robert T. Brockman; Nancy P. Carlson; Robert L. Clarke; Bruce W. Dunlevie; Lynn Laverty Elsenhans; Douglas Lee Foshee; Susanne Morris Glasscock; Robert R. Maxfi eld; M. Kenneth Oshman; Jeffery O. Rose; Lee H. Rosenthal; Hector Ruiz; Marc Shapiro; L. E. Simmons; Robert B. Tudor III; James S. Turley.

Administrative Offi cersDavid W. Leebron, president; Eugene Levy, pro vost; Kathy Collins, vice president for Finance ; Kevin Kirby, vice president for Administration; Chris Muñoz, vice pres i dent for Enrollment; Linda Thrane, vice pres i dent for Public Affairs; Scott W. Wise, vice president for In vest ments and trea sur er; Richard A. Zansitis, general counsel; Darrow Zeidenstein, vice president for Resource Development.

Rice Magazine is published by the Offi ce of Public Affairs of Rice University and is sent to university alumni, faculty, staff, graduate students, parents of un der grad u ates and friends of the university.

Editorial Offi cesCreative Services–MS 95

P.O. Box 1892Houston, TXHouston, TXHouston, T 77X 77X 251-1892

Fax: 713-348-6751 E-mail: [email protected]

PostmasterSend address changes to:

Rice Uni ver si tyDevelopment Services–MS 80

P.O. Box 1892Houston, TX 77251-1892

©FEB. 2009 RICE UNIVERSITY

Christopher [email protected]

F O R E W O R D


SallyportT H R O U G H T H E

It’s a slow process that usually occurs out of sight, silently but incessantly destroying the integrity and life span of buildings, bridges, pipelines and vehicles.It’s a slow process that usually occurs out of sight, silently but incessantly

Corrosion Control

It’s corrosion, and it’s a problem that costs the United States an estimated $276 billion a year. To fi ght this nemesis of the nation’s infrastructure, Rice has established the National Corrosion Center, which also involves NACE International, an association of more than 20,000 scientists, engineers and technicians concerned with corro-sion prevention and control.

Learn more:››› t inyurl .com/6qxm2b


What if a pill could keep the effects of Gaucher’s and similar diseases in check?

That’s the goal of Laura Segatori, who is working to treat lysosomal storage disorders (LSDs) like Gaucher’s and Tay-Sachs in ways that could also help Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s sufferers. All four diseases are the result of genetic mutations or sporadic condi-tions that disrupt the way proteins, the body’s basic building blocks, fold within cells. The way a protein folds determines its function, and any problems with the folding or changes within the structure can compromise the protein’s activity.

Segatori, the T.N. Law Assistant Professor in Chemical and Bio-molecular Engineering, hopes to make treating the diseases easier and less expensive by arresting the process that causes proteins to misfold.

“The idea is to look at these neurodegenerative diseases in a completely different way by enhanc-ing the cells’ quality-control system,” Segatori said. “Right now, the therapy that exists, particularly for Gaucher’s disease, is enzyme replacement, in which the enzyme (aka the protein) is synthesized and injected into the patient. It’s extremely expensive, and you need a lot of injections.”

Segatori’s treatment consists of regulators that promote the proper folding of LSD proteins, despite genetic mutations that would otherwise keep them from doing so. The regulators not only would be cheaper to manufacture, but they could be administered orally in the form of a pill.

—Mike Williams

Read more about the research:››› t i n y u r l . c o m / 5 bw9se

Read the research paper in the journal Cell:››› t i n y u r l . c o m / 64o3o6

Gathering information is never easy for an en-vironmental scientist, but it gets harder when monkeys are throwing, uh, stuff at you.

“I was setting up an experiment in the rain forest in Costa Rica. I looked up and saw all these really cute monkeys,” recalled Tibisay Perez, professor at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientifi c Research in Caracas. “I guess they were angry, because they all started throwing monkey poop at me!”

Years later, she’s still laughing about it. She also knows that, while the monkeys might not have appreciated her at the time, her research was good for them and for humanity, too.

Perez, who is at Rice to continue her study of global warming as an International Visiting Fellow in Energy, the Environment and Sustainability, is the fi rst of four researchers who will work here this year and next. The visiting fellows program, part of Rice’s Energy and Environmental Systems Institute, encour-ages close collaboration with international professors and fulfi lls a goal of Rice’s Vision for the Second Century by building relationships with research institutions beyond our shores.

Perez’s specialty is collecting and analyzing data on the emission of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, and she’s done so in rain forests and on farms in South and Central America — areas that are under-represented in current studies of greenhouse gases and climate.

Perez is a longtime colleague of Rice Assistant Professor of Earth Science Carrie Masiello, whom she met while both were earning their doctorates at the University of California at Irvine. Perez expects their work to lead to a better understanding of how to control the atmospheric release of nitrous oxide

— which is 300 times as powerful a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide — by adjusting the methods farmers use to fertilize crops.

Nitrous oxide is emitted when bacteria digest nitrogen from broken-down plant matter or from fertilizer that has not been consumed by crops. Perez and Masiello are looking for ways to properly fertilize corn, switchgrass and sugar cane — all major sources of biofuel — for maximum growth and minimal damage to the environment.

“Worldwide, the nitrogen-applied fertilizer plant uptake is about 30 percent,” said Perez. “The other 70 percent is lost by leaching, runoff and soil emission of nitrogenous gases, such as nitrous oxide, produced by microorganisms that feed off that fertilizer.” Finding ways of minimizing that enormous fertilizer loss by adding microorganism inhibitors or charcoal could save money and cut emissions, a win-win mitigation strategy Perez hopes will take root among farmers.

The issue becomes more important as developing nations ramp up agricultural production to ensure the security of their food supply and for the possible expansion of biofuel crops. “We want to determine the net global warming potential due to biofuel production in the tropics over long-term scales to evaluate if it is environmentally sustainable,” Perez said.

Masiello, who is seeking funding to continue the visiting fellows program beyond 2009, applauded the fresh perspective Perez and the others bring to Rice and the issues at hand. “Scientists in the developing world have expertise we need,” she said. “As we think about building a sustainable future, we need to partner with them.”

—Mike Williams

Learn more about the international visiting fellows program: ››› t i n y u r l . c o m / 6 f 9 7 f v

Fresh Perspective on Environmental Puzzles

Prof Pursues Pill to Halt Gaucher’s, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s

Carrie Masiello and Tibisay Perez

Plants and soils act like sponges for atmospheric carbon dioxide,but new research fi nds that one abnormally warm year can sup-press the amount of carbon dioxide taken up by some grassland ecosystems for as long as two years. The fi ndings followed an un-precedented four-year study of sealed, 12-ton containerized grass-land plots at the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno, Nev.“We confi rmed that ecosystems respond to climate change in a much more complex way than one might expect based solely on traditional experiments and observations,” said study co-author James Coleman, Rice vice provost for research and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “Our results provide new information for those who are formulating science-based carbon policies.”

The four-year study involved native Oklahoma tallgrass prairie ecosystems that were sealed inside four living-room-sized envi-ronment chambers. To minimize the disturbance of plants and soil bacteria, a dozen of the 12-ton, six-foot-deep plots were ex-tracted intact from the University of Oklahoma’s prairie research facility near Norman, Okla., and moved to DRI, where scientists replicated the daily and seasonal changes in temperature and rainfall that occur in the wild.

Plants and soils in ecosystems help modulate the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere when plants, which need CO2 to survive, absorb the gas during spring and summer growing seasons, stor-ing the carbon in their leaves, stems and roots. The stored carbon returns to the soil when plants die, and it is released back into the atmosphere by soil bacteria that feed on the dead plants.

This relatively stable cycle was disrupted in the second year of the study when half of the plots were subjected to temperatures

typical of a normal year, and the other half were subjected to abnormally warm temperatures — on the order of those pre-dicted to occur later this century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In the third year of the study, temperatures around the warmed plots were turned down again to match temperatures in the control plots. The CO2 fl ux — the amount of carbon dioxide moving between the atmosphere and biosphere — was tracked in each chamber for all four years of the study.

The scientists found that ecosystems exposed to an anoma-lously warm year had a net reduction in CO2 uptake for at least two years. These ecosystems trapped and held about one-third the amount of carbon in those years than did the plots exposed to normal temperatures.

“Large reductions in net CO2 uptake in the warm year were

caused mainly by decreased plant productivity resulting from drought,” explained co-author Paul Verburg of DRI, “while the lack of complete recovery the following year was caused by a lagged stimulation of CO2 release by soil microorganisms in response to soil moisture conditions.”

The collaborative study, which also involved scientists from the University of Nevada, Reno; the University of Oklahoma; the University of New Hampshire; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., was funded by the National Science Foundation and was published in the journal Nature.

—Jade Boyd

Learn more: ››› t i n y u r l . c o m / 5 gwkz8

Global Warming’s Ecosystem Double Whammy

Scientists found that ecosystems exposed to an anomalously warm year had a net reduction in CO2 uptake for at least two years.

James Coleman



Top 200Saying you’re in the top 200 might not sound so good, until you realize that means the top 200 universities worldwide. It sounds even better to say you’re No. 78 on that list.

That’s where Rice University stands according to rankings by Times Higher Education and QS Quacquarelli Symonds based on a peer review of more than 6,000 academics and 2,000 employers around the globe. The organization also looked at data on research, teaching and the international orientation of universities and noted that Rice has had some of the most frequently cited research in academic papers published around the world during the past fi ve years.

Complete list: ››› t in y u r l . c o m / 4 h u t b a

No. 1In the 2008 edition of “America’s Best-Value Colleges,” published by The Princeton Review, Rice University is ranked as the nation’s No. 1 best value among private col-leges. That’s the good news for students, but the good news from them can be found in the 2009 edition of Princeton Review’s “Best 368 Colleges.”

In that survey of 120,000 students attending the 368 colleges chosen for their outstanding aca-demics, Rice ranks No. 2 nationally both for best quality of life and for plenty of interaction among students of different races and classes. Rice has consistently ranked in the top 10 in both of these categories over the past several years and placed No. 1 in the 2007 edition. The university also ranks No. 15 for “happiest students.” Only about

15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and two Canadian colleges are profi led in the book.

Complete profi le: ››› t i n y u r l . c o m / 5 7 6 j a k

Top 20Rice University ranks among the top 20 best national uni-versities on U.S. News & World Report’s list for 2009, and it made the top 10 on the magazine’s “Great Schools, Great Prices” list.

Rice is 17th among 262 schools classifi ed as “na-tional universities” — institutions that offer a full range of undergraduate majors and master’s and doctoral degrees and are committed to producing groundbreaking research.

Rice also did well on several of the other lists comparing national universities: 10th best value, 7th in percentage of graduates who have the least amount of debt, 15th in economic diversity of

students, 17th in undergraduate programs among engineer-ing schools whose highest degree is a doctorate, 10th in biomedical engineering and 15th in computer engineering.

Read more: ››› t i n y u r l . c o m / 5 t t7b5

Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management ranks 16th in the U.S. according to a report released by The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur mag-azine. The ranking is based on survey data from more than 2,300 U.S. undergraduate and gradu-ate schools.

It’s the second year in a row that Rice has been ranked in the top 25 in the nation, and the program moved up six places from last year. Rice again had the only graduate entrepreneurship program in Texas that made the top 25 ranking.

New academic programs at the Jones School include a concentration in entrepreneurship, a capstone proj-ect in entrepreneurship required of all Executive MBAs and a life science en-trepreneurship certifi cate program.

Read more about the rankings:››› tinyurl.com/ 5zjyox

Learn more about the graduate programs at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management:››› jonesgsm.rice.edu

Learn more about the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship:››› alliance.rice.edu

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15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and two 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and two

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NanomaterialsNanomaterialsTrackingWith industrial-scale production of materials that use nanopar-

ticles on the near horizon, it has become important to understand how these tiny substances move through the environment and to learn what impact they may have

on the health and function of natural systems. Rice University is

on the right track.

The irony of research at the smallest scale is that it often requires the greatest effort. Enter the International Collaborative Center on Quantum Matter,

a joint venture by Rice University and China’s Zhejiang University intended to enhance long-term international research in the emerging area of quantum materials and magnetism.

he irony of research at the smallest scale is that it often requires the greatest effort. Enter the

Big Endeavor

LEARN MORE ››› t inyurl .com/5sw26q

LEARN MORE ››› t inyurl .com/6owfmw

SMALL MATTERS



Baker Institute Collaborates on Online Archive

The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy has become a participating organization in PolicyArchive, the nation’s fi rst com-prehensive, searchable, open-access online archive of research from foundation-funded and other public-policy think tanks. Baker Institute fellows and scholars will be able to distribute, publicize and archive their research through the site, which will be a tremendous resource for policymakers, members of the news media and the interested public.

Learn more about PolicyArchive: ››› www.policyarchive.org

Making a CAREER of ItRice University’s appeal to talented young faculty can easily be quantifi ed with one glance at the National Science Foundation’s awards list: Rice tied for second place among private American universities in the num-ber of CAREER Awards received last year, with funding given to seven professors who are just beginning to make their marks here and in the scientifi c community.

CAREER Awards, which are the most prestigious grants that young faculty members can get in the ba-sic sciences, support the early development of junior faculty who seem likely to become academic leaders in their fi elds of study. The fi ve-year grants are worth up to $500,000 and are among the most competitive at NSF, which awards only about 400 of the grants across all disciplines each year.

View the full list of Rice CAREER Award winners:››› t inyurl .com/64v7qp

Breakthrough in External Funding

Rice University attracted more than $100 million in fi scal year 2008 for sponsored research and educational initiatives — a milestone in its 96-year history and an extraordinary 28 percent increase over award funding for 2007. The funding came from a variety of sources, including founda-tions and private industry, but the lion’s share was from the federal government.

Learn more about Rice’s external funding breakthrough:››› t inyurl .com/56kmqk

Learn more about the Offi ce of Sponsored Research:››› osr. r ice.edu

Rice MBA Program Ranks First in the Southwest

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the business-to-business arm of The Economist magazine publisher Economist Group, the four most important outcomes to students pursuing an MBA are the ability to pursue new career op-portunities, the expansion of personal development and educational experiences, an increase in salary, and networking. Using those metrics, EIU ranks the MBA program at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management among the world’s best. Topping the rankings in Texas and the Southwest, the Rice MBA program ranked 25th in the U.S. and 44th globally. The ranking’s global distribution to business professionals gives the Rice MBA tremendous international visibility.

View survey results and overall rankings:››› economist .com

Learn more about Rice’s highly respected MBA program:››› t inyurl .com/5cujan

It’s all part of a grand plan to make Rice more accessible to everybody. The page, which sits atop a Google map and adds building details and photos to its standard street names and satellite views, allows users to locate bus stop markers and locate police call boxes throughout campus, as well as to get the street views provided by Google. High on the list of features to come are more descriptive text to go with the building photos, cell phone access to maps and GPS locator capabilities so users can pinpoint their location on campus.

And if that isn’t enough, check out

the new virtual tour of campus, where you can fi nd 16 different 360-degree, interactive panoramas taken on and nearby campus. Each panorama is accompanied by a brief text box that explains the scene and provides links to other information. The feature also includes a map showing where the shots are located. More virtual vignettes will be added in the future as new projects around campus are completed.

It still may be true that a map is not the territory, but the Rice interac-tive map and virtual tour are the next best thing to being there yourself.

Find Your Way the High-Tech Way

Those who say a map is not the territory haven’t visited Rice’s interactive campus map. Have a look here. Click around there. Activate a blue dot, and you’ll see a picture of the building it’s attached to. Click a name in the building list, and you’ll be taken to the building — virtually, of course. Click down to street level under “Related Information,” and drive along the tree-lined lanes.

View the Rice interactive campus map: ››› www.rice.edu/maps

Experience the Rice virtual tour: › ›› www.rice.edu/v i r t u a l t o u r s



More than 10,000 Facebook members, including students, alumni, faculty and staff, already identify themselves as part of the Rice network, and you can join in the fun and show support for the university on Rice’s newly launched Facebook page.

For Facebook members: Add the Rice Facebook page:››› t in y u r l . c o m / 6 5 7 2 a 5

New to Facebook: Create your Facebook page for free:››› w w w. f ac eb o o k . c o m

Calling All Facebook Fans


What if you could bring medications to the mar-ketplace faster and at lower prices? It sounds even better if your production process is envi-ronmentally friendly. Those are the goals of two Rice University researchers whose long-term collaboration seeks to develop an environmen-tally friendly bacterial process to replace cur-rent chemical production methods.

“A chemical factory uses hydrogen gas and metal to perform a reaction,” said George Bennett, the E.D. Butcher Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. But in a bio-logical system, enzymes are the workhorses that carry out the process, acting as catalysts to produce pure chiral molecules, which serve as pharmaceutical agents that can be tailored for specifi c uses in desired areas of the body.

“Our group is one of the very fi rst tar-geting what we call ‘cofactor engineering,’” said Ka-Yiu San, the E.D. Butcher Professor

in Bioengineering and Bennett’s partner on the project. A cofactor is a chemical compound that acts as a helper in the process of biochemical transformation. San and Bennett set up a biochemical reaction that continually replenishes the supply of the cofactor NADPH — critical in forming chiral molecules — inside metabolically engineered E. coli cells.

“This can be used not only for medical compounds, but also for other biochemicals and biofuels,” said San, who notes that patents for the process are in the works.

—Mike Williams

This is one conclusion of research con-ducted by Rice economists Peter Hartley and Ken Medlock, whose analysis relied on the Rice World Gas Trade Model (RWGTM) they have been developing for a number of years. The model is designed to predict fl uctuations in natural gas supply, demand and prices over the next few decades, taking into account the possible effects of political disturbances as well as technologi-cal change.

Hartley, academic director of the Shell Center for Sustainability, and Medlock, a fel-low in energy studies at the James A. Baker

III Institute for Public Policy, also found that some of the consequences of natural gas prices and dependence on Russia and the Middle East could be lessened if the United States opened domestic areas that are currently off-limits to exploration and production.

“An increase in domestic gas production will change the elasticity of response of the market to disruptions and shocks,” Hartley said. However, he concluded, the effects are unlikely to be large enough to completely offset the effects of tightened emission controls.

Europe, whose natural gas has tradition-ally been supplied by Russia, may see an opening of providers. “Europe is a major consuming market that seeks to import natural gas from a variety of sources,” Medlock said.

The RWGTM predicts that gas from the Middle East will dominate European imports after 2020, displacing supplies from Russia and the Caspian States, and that Turkey, because of its geographical location, is likely to become a major transit hub for natural gas headed to Greece, Bulgaria and the rest of Europe.

The researchers concluded their analysis with a note of caution: “Developments (or lack thereof) in Russia as well as hindrances in the Middle East can alter the most ef-fi cient outcome.”

—Franz Brotzen

View working paper version of the Rice World Gas Trade Model online:››› tinyurl.com/5o4rwn

Weighing the Effects of CO2 Restrictions on World Energy Markets

If concerns about global warming lead politicians to impose restric-tions on greenhouse gas–producing emissions, natural gas demand will rise substantially because it is the fossil fuel with the lowest ratio of CO2 emissions to energy output.

Green Pharmaceutical Production

“Our group is one of the very fi rst targeting what we call

‘cofactor engineering.’”—Ka-Yiu San

Ka-Yiu San and George Bennett

Turkey, because of its geographical location, is likely to become a major transit hub for natural gas.

101010 www.rice.edu/ricemagazinewww.rice.edu/ricemagazinewww.rice.edu/ricemagazine



In fact, Denton Cooley, president and surgeon-in-chief of the Texas Heart Institute (THI), said, “The availability of an effective, reliable mechanical replacement for the fail-ing human heart would have an enormous impact on health care.” He should know. In 1969, Cooley became the fi rst surgeon to im-plant a complete artifi cial heart in a human.

Since then, several implantable artifi cial hearts have been developed, all of which were designed to mimic the pulse of the natural heart. As a consequence, they are somewhat bulky and mechanically complex, which leads to issues of reliability. To solve the problem, the National Institutes of Health has funded a project to design small-er and more reliable heart pumps under the Bioengineering Research Partnership, a special program to encourage collaborations among medical and engineering experts. Led by THI, the project includes engineers from Rice University, St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, MicroMed Cardiovascular Inc. and the University of Houston.

The researchers are developing two heart-assist pumps that individually perform the function of the left and right ventricles.

Rather than trying to mimic the pulses of the natural heart, the devices pump blood continuously. The one for the left ventricle — the heart’s main pumping chamber — circulates blood throughout the body; the one for the right ventricle pumps blood to and from the lungs. The continuous-fl ow pumps are smaller — about the size of a C battery — and simpler than their complex, rhythmic predecessors. Their

small size will ease implantation and use in children as well as adults.

Rice’s role is to develop a computer model to analyze blood fl ow and any dam-age to the blood cells and platelets that might result as blood travels through the pump.

“Because these pumps will be implanted

for the long term, we have to make sure that blood damage is minimal,” said Matteo Pasquali, Rice associate professor in chemi-cal and biomolecular engineering and in chemistry.

Pasquali and his colleagues will monitor the computer models for two main types of blood damage: excessive release of hemo-globin from the red blood cells, which can be toxic to the kidneys and liver, and the platelet activation process that leads to for-mation of white thrombi, or clots of white blood cells, which could cause a blockage in the brain or small blood vessels.

“We are trying to understand why and where these thrombi form so we can sug-gest how to change the shape of the pump,” Pasquali said.

Researchers at the University of Houston are investigating the control mechanism that

will mimic the self-regulating function of the heart in an effort to ensure that the left and right ventricles stay in sync with each other and to make the pumps respond to the body’s changing needs for blood, such as during exercise.

“The heart has a built-in self-regulating ability,” Pasquali said. “Since the two pumps, constituting the total artifi cial heart, bypass the whole heart, it’s important to build a mechanism for regulation in the devices. Otherwise, you could get an accumulation of blood in the lungs if the left pump is pump-ing too slow compared to the right pump.”

The researchers will apply what they learn from computer simulation to physical models of the pump that are manufactured and tested in laboratories at MicroMed. This Houston-based company makes the MicroMed DeBakey ventricular assist device (VAD) that is being used for this study. The pump, which already is used in human patients in Europe, is named for the late heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, who pioneered the development of heart pumps. In the 1960s, he collaborated with chemical engineering professor Bill Akers, who led Rice’s Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, to produce the fi rst successful left ventricular heart bypass device — a precursor to the VADs used as the base design in the current research project.

—B.J. Almond

Learn more: ››› tinyurl.com/63ycr2

Heart failure is the leading cause of death in the United States, and the American Heart Association estimates the direct and indirect cost of heart failure in the United States for 2008 at nearly $35 billion. It’s a major predicament whose only solution seems to be the creation of a simple and reliable artifi cial heart.

HeartMatter

of the

Rather than mimic the pulse of the natural heart, the ventricular assist device pumps blood continuously.

Researchers Matteo Pasquali, Dhruv Arora and Bob Benkowski

Over time the disease can cause life-threatening organ damage. Wilson disease affects as many as 150,000 peo-ple worldwide. But a combination of computer simulations and cutting-edge lab experiments by physical biochem-ists at Rice University may offer some hope.

“The mutation that causes most cas-

es of Wilson disease is well-known,” said the study’s lead author Agustina Rodriguez-Granillo, a Rice doctoral student in biochemistry and cell biol-ogy who carried out the mathematical simulations and laboratory research. “Our study looks at the overall puzzle to see how such a small mutation can alter the shape and function of such a large and complex protein.”

Although large quantities of copper can be toxic, the human body needs

a small amount for key enzymes involved in, for example, respiration and brain functions. ATP7B sits in an internal membrane and acts something like a warehouse manager, locking up bulk quantities of copper and handing it out when it’s needed.

The researchers focused on a ge-netic fl aw that is caused when just one

of the more than 1,400 amino acids in ATP7B is changed.

“This mutation occurs at a crucial location where the protein typically binds with a molecule that provides the energy the protein needs to move copper from place to place,” said study co-author Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede, an associate professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice and Rodriguez-Granillo’s adviser. “Past studies have compared the behavior of the mutant

protein with that of the nonmutant and found very little difference, so it was unclear how this small change led to the devastating effects that are seen in Wilson disease.”

Rodriguez-Granillo, Wittung-Stafshede and postdoctoral researcher Erik Sedlak (now at the University of Texas at San Antonio) looked spe-cifi cally at the portion of the protein where the mutation occurs and not only confi rmed that the protein’s function was signifi cantly reduced in the mutant form, but found that the mutation caused structural changes in other sections of the protein far from the mutation site. They plan further

research to examine these changes to learn exactly how they alter the protein’s function.

The research was supported by The Robert Welch Foundation and is available online from the Journal of Molecular Biology.

—Jade Boyd

Finding Molecular Clues to Wilson Disease

It’s amazing how a single small mutation can have such a large effect. In the case of a subtle genetic change to a complex protein called ATP7B, the result is Wilson disease, a genetic disorder that alters the protein’s ability to work, causing cop-per to build up to toxic levels in the liver, brain, eyes and other organs.

Learn more: ››› tinyurl.com/6zydlo

Agustina Rodriguez-Granillo

—Agustina Rodriguez-Granillo

“Our study looks at the overall puzzle to see how such a small mutation can alter the shape and function of such a large and complex protein.”




We may not look anything like tiny, amoeba-like creatures that live in the sea, but what we have in common with them — and with all the creatures on Earth — interests Nicholas Putnam.An assistant professor in Rice’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Putnam co-authored a study published in the journal Nature that breaks down the genetic code of Trichoplax, a simple saltwater creature one might fi nd anywhere in the world — even in household aquariums.

“We’re trying to identify genes in the Trichoplax that also are found in other animals,” Putnam said. Recognizing common genes among many species helps scientists fi gure out their lin-eage, as well as where they diverge. It also might help scientists learn the ways groups of genes function.

Why Trichoplax?“Sequencing a genome is a big effort and a

big investment, so we have to choose carefully,” Putnam said. Trichoplax, which is a tiny little pancake of cells you can barely see without a microscope, has a relatively low place in the evolutionary chain, making it ideal for study. But despite its lowly status, Trichoplex shares genetic elements with humans. A gene index published as part of the Nature paper clearly shows many large collections of genes that group together on both

Trichoplax and human chromosomes.Putnam hopes to understand the purpose these large, conserved groupings

of genes serve, as well as the reason they’re together and the effects on the health of the organism if they get separated by a mutation.

The study was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the University of California and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

—Mike Williams

Learn more: ››› tinyurl.com/55b8qs

Tiny Creature Is a Big Subject

Recognizing common genes among many species helps scientists fi gure out their lineage, as well as where they diverge. It also might help sci-entists learn the ways groups of genes function.

Nicholas Putnam

Agustina Rodriguez-Granillo

Satish Nagarajaiah

To envision what a building undergoes in an earthquake, Satish Nagarajaiah sug-gests imagining yourself standing in a mov-ing bus or train.“Riders make their bodies and muscles tense when the bus moves, and they relax as soon as the sudden motion stops,” said Nagarajaiah, professor in civil and environmental engi-neering and in mechanical engineering and materials science. “The typical steel-framed building or bridge can’t do that, but we want to fi nd technologies like adaptive stiffness and damping systems that can give structures that ability.”

About 100 U.S. buildings and bridges — including the famed Golden Gate Bridge — have been built or are being retrofi tted with large, passive dampers that use pistons and hydraulic fl uid to absorb the impact of sudden shocks the way that shock absorbers do in a car. But passive dampers are designed to perform the same way in every earthquake, and as quake researchers have discovered in recent years, not all quakes are created equal. The 1994 Northridge earthquake in California, the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan, the 1999 Chi Chi earthquake in Taiwan and the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China are each examples of quakes that delivered a massive initial shockwave that was particularly damaging for struc-tures near the epicenter.

“Our aim is to create smart structures that can sense what kind of shock is arriving and react with the best possible strategy to minimize damage,” said Nagarajaiah, principal investigator on the project, which is funded by $1.6 million from the National Science Foundation. Nagarajaiah’s past research on smart structures and structural control for seis-mic protection has led to quake-protection systems that have been implemented in China and Japan.

—Jade Boyd

Learn more: ››› tinyurl.com/6nxhs9

‘Smart’ Shock Absorbers Take the Quake

Trichoplax, which is a tiny little pancake of cells you can barely see without a microscope, has a relatively low place in the evolutionary chain, making it ideal for study.


On the exterior, bands of bricks in colors like robin’s egg blue, bright yellow and sea foam green are interspersed with 10,000 tan bricks salvaged from the homes that once stood on the building site. “I didn’t anticipate how truly amazing they would look,” Rice Director of Sustainability Richard Johnson said of the recycled bricks. “They really help connect the building with

the rest of the street, and that was made possible because we viewed the previous homes as potential resources. I’m very proud of that outcome.”

But recycled building materials aren’t the RCC’s only environmentally sensitive attribute. Among others are features that enable the building to enjoy an energy savings of about 20 percent over buildings that are simply built to code, including light sensors, programmable thermostats for each of fi ve separate zones, double-paned energy-effi cient windows and overhangs that block the strong southern sun. Other elements should result in substantial savings in domestic water consumption, such as

water-effi cient fi xtures and one of the build-ing’s most unconventional features — an 8,000-gallon underground rainwater cistern fed by collection sites on the building’s roof. The collected water will be used to irrigate the building’s landscape, which show-cases local, low-maintenance plant species. “Ordinarily, people don’t view storm water as a resource, but we did,” Johnson said,

adding that Rice saved more than $200,000 by installing a cistern instead of a storm sewer.

The RCC is divided into four color-coded quadrants, with preschoolers in the southeast, toddlers in the southwest, infants in the northeast, and the support and teacher areas in the northwest. More than 80 students between the ages of 6 weeks and 5 years have enrolled at the school, which is operated by Metropolitan Montessori Schools through the Center for Early Childhood Education (CECE) and which employs the progressive Montessori method of instruction. With activities like art projects, songs, stories, lessons, recess

and rest times, children are encouraged to satisfy their natural curiosity through learn-ing and exploration. CECE is also working with the Rice School Literacy and Culture Project to provide a storytelling curricu-lum that has been proven to support and enhance childhood vocabulary knowledge and literary skills.

“Each classroom environment is equipped to ensure the success of all students, with teachers facilitating learning in fi ve key areas: math, language, science, sensory development and everyday living skills,” said Lisa Hall, a consultant with Rice

University who acts as a liaison between the campus community and the operator. “Life lessons of respect, cooperation, appreciation of others, problem solving and responsibil-ity are modeled and practiced on a daily basis by children and staff.”

The campus, which opened last September, has a maximum capacity of 86 students, who must be the children of Rice faculty, staff or students to be eligible for ad-mission. To learn more about the RCC or to fi ll out a wait-list application, please visit the CECE Web site at www.discovercece.org.

—Merin Porter

Construction @rice

New Rice child care center helps keep kids healthy and happy

The new Rice Children’s Campus (RCC) doesn’t just meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards — it takes them by the hand and dances a waltz with them. Everything about the Chaucer Street building is graceful, from its fi ve-point sawtooth roof with north-facing windows to its undulating blue entryway ceiling that’s more than a little reminiscent of ocean waves.

“Each classroom environment is equipped to ensure the success of all students, with teachers facilitating learning in fi ve key areas: math, language, science, sensory development and everyday living skills.”

—Lisa Hall

New Rice child care center helps keep kids healthy and happyFamily Matters

The holidays at Rice had a little more sparkle with the completion of the South Plant’s 85-foot-tall glass steam tower last month. Designed by renowned architect Antoine Predock, the South Plant will provide the chilled water and steam necessary to heat and cool the BioScience Research Collaborative at the corner of Main Street and University Boulevard, as well as other buildings that eventually will make their home on the south-west side of campus.

For a more in-depth look at the South Plant, visit: ››› t inyurl .com/73yrqo

Tower of Power


Webcam: ››› t inyurl .com/6mmh2q



For a building that’s the equivalent of a 40-story skyscraper lying on its side, it’s no surprise that the new Rice Village Apartment (RVA) complex is turning local apartment living on its ear. Not only will Rice graduate students who move into the 137-unit, 237-bed residence enjoy close proximity to campus — only one block west of the university in Rice Village — they’ll also benefi t from extremely competitive monthly rates, plus amenities like a clubhouse, a laundry room on each of four fl oors, a study room equipped with computers and even a community herb garden. Apartments, which range in size from effi ciencies to two-bedroom, two-bath units, are fully furnished and feature free basic cable and Internet. The complex also offers four handicap-accessible units, although the entire community complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

While the facility has fewer parking spaces than you’d fi nd at a commercial apartment building, there are many more than are typically available at a student housing facility. Still, Rice is hoping there will be plenty of parking spaces to spare.

“Rice committed to a robust shuttle schedule and bicycle storage spaces as a means of minimizing the need for residents to have cars,” said Rice Graduate Housing Manager Abeer Mustafa. “We also included a bicycle option as part of an early move-in reward program where, in exchange for promising not to bring a car to the apartments or to park one on neighborhood streets, students receive a new bicycle when they move in.”

Rice decided to build RVA — its third graduate student residence — in 2005, when the waiting lists for Morningside Square and the Rice Graduate Apartments were burgeoning and the purchase of fi ve lots on Shakespeare Street made the construction feasible. The new lots were adjacent to nine existing Morningside Square apartment

buildings on the north side of Shakespeare Street, which were in much worse condition structurally than the Morningside Square buildings on the south side of Shakespeare.

“With the additional acreage, we had the opportunity to demol-ish our existing units that were nearing depletion and replace them with a higher-density and better-programmed structure,” said Mark Ditman, associate vice president of housing and dining. “The pri-mary reason we did this was to do our part to strengthen graduate programs by offering a third community that would help attract and retain high-caliber graduate students.”

Although the new complex is off campus, it still maintains the Rice feel with a brick-and-stucco exterior remi-niscent of Hanszen and Baker colleges. It also follows the lead of other new campus buildings in that it was designed and built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards.

“We were really conscientious about energy conservation in this building because the graduate students pay their own utility bills,” said Director of Sustainability Richard Johnson, who said the new complex is at least 30 percent more effi cient than a standard apartment building. That means that if a student typically pays $100 per month for utilities, they’ll only pay $70 at RVA — which creates substantial savings over

the course of a year. “The project team devoted considerable attention to selecting

ENERGY STAR appliances, developing effi cient lighting strategies and providing ample natural daylight for the apartments,” Johnson said. “By offering apartments that are so energy effi cient, we are essentially embedding fi nancial aid into the building itself.”

—Merin Porter

Learn more: ››› gradapts.rice.edu

Construction @rice

Making a livingNew graduate student apartments make life a little cheaper — and a lot more fun

Thanks to $24 million in fi nancial support from generous donors, the site for Owls basketball and volleyball home games underwent a dramatic transformation that included renovations and up-dates to the arena, seating arrangements, sound and game information systems, restrooms and concession areas — among many other improve-ments. Now the basketball and volleyball teams enjoy gleaming new locker rooms; fans can shop at a team store; and donors have access to a luxuri-ous club room, which offers a balcony overlooking College Way and provides an area to meet, greet and eat prior to games.

In addition to a new look, the building also re-ceived a new name. Dubbed the Tudor Fieldhouse in honor of major donor and Rice trustee Bobby Tudor ’82 and his wife, Phoebe, it encompasses Autry Court and the new Youngkin Center, which replaced the facility’s old administrative section. Youngkin Center was named after donor Glenn

Prefab MasterpiecesThe Museum of Modern Art in New York has long served as home to magnifi cent pieces by Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, but one of the mu-seum’s recent acquisitions may be its most extraordinary: Rice University’s new college bathrooms.

Featured in the museum’s Cellophane House exhibit last fall, the 7-by-7-foot prefabricated lavatories were built in a factory and delivered to Rice’s Duncan College and McMurtry College con-struction sites as completed units, with showers, sinks, toilets and even mirrors in place. That means less traffi c to sites, reduced construction waste and fewer subcontractors — all of which align with Rice’s goal of achieving Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certifi -cation for every new campus building.

“Using prefabricated bathroom pods actually prevents waste before it is even created, thanks to the use of lean manu-facturing processes,” said Rice Director of Sustainability Richard Johnson. “This fi ts the spirit of Duncan and McMurtry colleges, where we also are recycling on the order of 90 percent of all of the construction waste that is generated.”

Construction Web Site Remodel

Looking for news on the many construction projects around campus? Visit Rice’s recently renovated con-struction Web site to take advantage of an interactive map with project locations and descriptions, plus Web camera views, photos and videos. Also be sure to check out the latest construction news and alerts as well as up-to-the-minute notices of road closures, util-ity outages and much more.

Learn more: ››› construction.rice.edu

Youngkin ’90 and his wife, Suzanne, and it houses a study area for student–athletes, a hydrotherapy room with hot and cold whirlpools, a fi rst-aid room, and staff offi ces that overlook a weight and train-ing room. The center connects Autry Court with the existing Fox Gymnasium, and students and fans will enter the renovated facility via an all-new plaza, which provides access to all of Rice’s sports venues and offers a feeling of continuity to the campus’s “athletic quadrant.”

On Nov. 15, just 16 months after renovations began, Tudor Fieldhouse unveiled its new look at an Owls basketball game, where athletes and fans alike enjoyed the center-hung LED scoreboard, crystal-clear sound and new student seating section on the court’s south side. After nearly six decades, Autry Court looks better than ever — and has fi nally taken its place among the nation’s premier athletic facilities.

—Merin Porter

Nip, tuck, Nip, tuck, score!

Autry Court renovation is a net gain for RiceAfter 57 years of accumulated structural wrinkles and sags, Autry Court was due for a facelift.




BP, one of the world’s largest produc-ers of oil and natural gas as well as one of the world’s largest investors in alternative energy, knows how criti-cal it is to get quality graduates to fi ll its workforce. The company not only is looking to Rice, but also is helping out with schol-arships awarded to 18 select full-time students who have expressed an interest in energy-related careers. The $10,000 scholarships are intended to help offset tuition, fees and other expenses.

The scholarships refl ect the close relationship that BP has developed with Rice. BP also has asked Rice to lead a consortium of universities in develop-ing petrotechnical training that will enhance the dissemination of knowl-edge and skills among BP’s employees around the world.

—B.J. Almond

Learn more: ››› tinyurl.com/6 emtyb

Mathematics doctoral student Helge Krüger has been named winner of the annual Studentenpreis, awarded by the Austrian Mathematical Society for the best master’s thesis written in Austria.He wrote the thesis as a graduate student at the University of Vienna. Titled “Relative Oscillation Theory for Sturm-Liouville Operators,” it was built on a theorem on differential equations by 19th-century mathematician Charles-François Sturm, who fi rst calculated the velocity of sound through water.

Krüger said that meet-ing Rice associate profes-sor of mathematics David Damanik, now his faculty adviser, was an important factor in his decision to come to Rice, but that the university’s outstanding reputation and friendly atmosphere were im-portant, too.

“People always said the U.S. is a better place to be, and I wanted to fi nd out for my-self,” said Krüger, an avid reader and Frisbee afi cionado. “The professors here are excellent. You can talk to people, and they always want to talk to you. There’s a feeling here of a com-munity doing things, which I think is great and which I didn’t experience in Europe.”

“People always said the U.S. is a better place to be, and I wanted to fi nd out for myself.”

Doctoral Student

Wins Austrian

Math Award

—Helge Krüger

BP Gulf of Mexico Chief Financial Offi cer Peter Zwart spoke during a luncheon honoring BP scholarship recipients.

Sturm, who fi rst calculated the velocity of sound through

adviser, was an important factor in his decision to come

Energy Scholarships to Energetic Students

19

Students

It all began when graduate student Peter Nguyen made a joke about putting res-veratrol into beer, but none of the young researchers took the idea seriously until they discovered a good bit of published literature about modifying yeast with resveratrol-related genes. When they looked further, they found two detailed accounts by teams that had attacked both halves of the metabolic problem independently.

“That was when we said, ‘You know, we could actually do this,’” said junior Thomas Segall-Shapiro.

The team entered biobeer in the Nov. 8–9 International Genetically Engineered Machine competition in Cambridge, Mass., and came home with a gold medal and second place for best presentation. In ad-dition, their research has become a magnet for worldwide media attention.

Ironically, most of the team’s under-graduate members aren’t old enough to

same time, and test batches contained some unappetizing chemical markers needed for unappetizing chemical markers needed for the experiments.

“There’s no way anyone’s drink-“There’s no way anyone’s drink-ing biobeer until we get rid of that,” ing biobeer until we get rid of that,” said Segall-Shapiro, “not to mention said Segall-Shapiro, “not to mention that there’s only one genetically modi-that there’s only one genetically modi-fi ed strain of yeast that’s ever been ap-fi ed strain of yeast that’s ever been ap-proved for use in beer, period. In short, proved for use in beer, period. In short, it will be a long time before anybody it will be a long time before anybody consumes any of this.”

So why would someone want So why would someone want to make beer with resveratrol in the to make beer with resveratrol in the fi rst place? It’s a naturally occurring fi rst place? It’s a naturally occurring compound that some studies have compound that some studies have found to have anti-infl ammatory, found to have anti-infl ammatory, anticancer and cardiovascular benefi ts anticancer and cardiovascular benefi ts for mice and other animals. While for mice and other animals. While it’s still unclear if humans enjoy the same it’s still unclear if humans enjoy the same benefi ts, resveratrol is already sold as a benefi ts, resveratrol is already sold as a health supplement, and some believe it health supplement, and some believe it could play a role in the “French paradox,”

that the French enjoy relatively low rates of heart disease despite having a diet that’s rich in saturated fats.

“I’ve seen studies where resveratrol has been shown to activate the same proteins that are known to play a role in extending the life span of lab animals kept on low-calorie diets,” said junior David Ouyang.

In concocting the brew, the team members worked with a strain of yeast used commercially to make wheat beer. They obtained a sample to make wheat beer. They obtained a sample

of the yeast from Houston’s Saint Arnold of the yeast from Houston’s Saint Arnold Brewing Company, and they are modify-Brewing Company, and they are modify-ing it with two sets of genes. The fi rst set ing it with two sets of genes. The fi rst set allows the yeast to metabolize sugars and allows the yeast to metabolize sugars and excrete an intermediate chemical that the excrete an intermediate chemical that the second set can later convert into resveratrol.second set can later convert into resveratrol.

“In terms of educational value, “In terms of educational value, the great thing about synthetic biology the great thing about synthetic biology research is that it stimulates undergraduate research is that it stimulates undergraduate creativity and gives students an opportuni-creativity and gives students an opportuni-ty to work collaboratively at an early stage ty to work collaboratively at an early stage of their science and engineering educa-of their science and engineering educa-tion,” said the team’s faculty adviser Joff tion,” said the team’s faculty adviser Joff Silberg, assistant professor in biochemis-Silberg, assistant professor in biochemis-try and cell biology. “While students work try and cell biology. “While students work

collaboratively in other undergraduate collaboratively in other undergraduate research endeavors, they typically are not given research endeavors, they typically are not given the pie-in-the-sky opportunity to pursue their the pie-in-the-sky opportunity to pursue their own ideas.” own ideas.”

—Jade Boyd

Learn more: ››› tinyurl.com/6 f f yu4

College students often spend their free time thinking about beer, but some Rice University students are taking it to the next level. They’re using genetic engineering to create a “bio-beer” that contains resveratrol, a chemical in wine that’s been shown to reduce cancer and heart disease in lab animals.

Anticancer BioBrew

Rice Magazine • No. 2 • 2009

graduate members aren’t old enough to legally drink beer, but even if they were, they probably wouldn’t want to consume their own product. Their early work went into creating a geneti-cally modifi ed strain of yeast that will ferment beer and produce resveratrol at the

could play a role in the “French paradox,” the seemingly contradictory observation Learn more: ››› tinyurl.com/6 f f yu4

L–R, top row: Joff Silberg, Taylor Stevenson, Thomas Segall-Shapiro and David Ouyang; bottom row: Selim Sheikh, Sarah Duke, Arielle Layman and Beth Beason


Help for Young HeartsAs a young student shadowing pediatric oncologists, Elizabeth “Libby” Stephens realized just how hard it is to be around children who are ill. It was all the prompt-ing she needed to try to get to the heart of the matter.Arta Sadrzadeh, a graduate student in the

Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, has won the second annual Ken Kennedy–Cray Inc. Graduate Fellowship Award, which sup-ports graduate students involved in high-performance computing.

Founded last year with a $150,000 grant from the supercomputer manufacturer Cray Inc., the fellowship is named in honor of the late Ken Kennedy, a Rice computing pioneer who served on Cray’s board of directors and founded the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology, which recently was named in his honor.

Sadrzadeh works in the lab of mechanical en-gineering and materials science professor Boris Yakobson. His research focuses on the geometri-cal, mechanical and electronic structures and electron-transport properties of nanostructures such as pure boron fullerenes and nanotubes, which might fi nd applications in targeted drug de-livery, neutron cancer therapy and hydrogen stor-age. Sadrzadeh and Yakobson also have studied the use of carbon nanotubes as electro-chemical gas sensors, and they are investigating the po-tential of quantum wires for long-range energy transmission.

—Mike Williams

The San Diego native, working on com-bined medical and bioengineering doc-torates at Rice and the Baylor College of Medicine, has received a fellowship from the National Institutes of Health to pur-sue her research into the development of replacement heart valves for young patients that will grow as they do.

Currently, bad heart valves can be replaced in one of two ways: with a bioprosthetic valve (harvested from a pig, for instance) or with a mechanical device. Both methods have problems when used in children. Mechanical valves work well in adults but require anticoagulant medicine to

thin the blood, and anticoagulants present potential dangers to active children prone to cuts. Bioprosthetic valves, which perform relatively successfully in adults, rapidly cal-cify in children. And there is an even more basic problem with both these treatments: Replacement valves don’t grow with the child, so they have to be replaced every few years, at the cost and discomfort of repeated open-heart surgeries.

Congenital heart disease, which is found in 1 percent of newborns, is relatively easy to diagnose. “The valves are very disorga-nized,” Stephens said. “There are none of the layers, none of the properly aligned collagen — the connective tissue that gives tensile strength — that you’d expect to fi nd.”

The main challenge is to fi nd a way to make replacement valves that can be implanted once and for all, and Stephens is working to learn how to grow a new valve using the youngster’s own cells as the source material. To do that, she has called not only on her own medical and bioengineering skills, but also on those of her advisers, Jane Grande-Allen, an assistant professor of bioengineering, and Jennifer

West, the Isabel C. Cameron Professor and chair of the Department of Bioengineering.

Stephens’ data will serve as a template for the process of building heart valves. “People have been collecting information on valves for a long time, but not with the resolution Libby hopes to achieve,” Grande-Allen said. “This fellowship gives her the opportunity to build on the research she’s already done.”

Heart valves are complex connective tissues, Stephens explained, that evolve throughout a human’s life. Their compli-ance and stiffness, as well as their biology, change substantially with age, so fi guring

out how to make a valve that’s appropri-ate for a patient of a particular age will be tricky.

Growing new valves involves both biochemical engineering to create the valve and mechanical engineering to build the device that will be used to grow it. Stephens said the biochemical part involves using a polyethylene glycol hydrogel, a water-insoluble polymer that can be used as the scaffold in which target cells drawn from the patient are suspended. The design of this hydrogel is the component being ad-dressed by her research.

The mechanical part, the bioreactor, would contain the scaffold. “A bioreactor basically pumps media, the equivalent of blood, back and forth around the hydrogel while putting it through a bending mo-tion that causes the cells to produce more collagen and extracellular matrix, making it stronger. Finally, when the valve is fully developed, surgeons will be able to implant it.” Several bioreactors are being designed by other graduate students in Grande-Allen’s lab.

—Mike Williams

MEMS Student Wins Kennedy Fellowship

Heart valves are complex connective tissues that evolve throughout a human’s life. Their compli-ance and stiffness, as well as their biology, change substantially with age, so fi guring out how to make a valve that’s appropriate for a patient of a particular age will be tricky.

Arta Sadrzadeh

Students

Stephens is working to learn how to grow a new valve using the youngster’s own cells as the source material.


Libby Stephens


Although Lovett anticipated substantial growth for Rice, he envi-sioned that its increase would not be so much in size as in impact, leadership, eminence and greatness. And while he noted that limited resources required focus on certain areas at the beginning, he said in those words we celebrate today that we must set “no upper limit” on our endeavors.

As we look back, we must say that Rice has experienced a remarkable 96-plus years. We have seen our university recognized as among the very best in America and, indeed, the world. Rice has grown from a handful of buildings to approximately 70. Despite our small size, our faculty wins recognition and accolades that suggest we are indeed a giant.

Since the founding, we have added new schools and endeavors: The Shepherd School of Music, the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, and the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology, to name only a few. Lovett’s dream of a residential college system has become a reality. Two of our faculty (and another of our graduates) received Nobel Prizes, and in the last year alone, seven of our young profes-sors were given National Science Foundation CAREER Awards, the second highest number of recipients among private universities.

Rice is small but powerful, and we have achieved what we have by taking a path that has been unconventional and bold. But we must always remember that we are on a trajectory, not at a destina-tion; our work at Rice is never fi nished. We recognize that “no upper

limit” means there are always new possibilities, new fi elds of knowl-edge, new enterprises and new opportunities for our university. As we stand here on the brink of the university’s second century, our obligations to Rice can be no less than those set forth by Lovett at our founding: Our aspirations and actions must continue to create a “university of the highest grade.”

President Lovett wisely observed: “It is not diffi cult to plan for 50 years, nor is it diffi cult to plan for fi ve years: Diffi culty enters only when it is necessary to plan at one and the same time for the immediate future and for the next hundred years.”

And yet, that very task lies before us. What we seek to accom-plish with the Vision for the Second Century and the Centennial Campaign are the things that must be done now to continue our progress while simultaneously laying the foundations for our next century.

While this is a time in our country of economic uncertainty and concern, it also is a time of hope and possibility. As we at Rice contemplate what we must do, we should do so in the spirit of opti-mism and confi dence. Some, perhaps, would say that the Centennial Campaign’s goal of $1 billion is too high. Of course it is not — I know President Lovett would say it is not. He might, instead, tell us it is not enough, for no fi nite amount of resources can ever enable us to achieve the goals that refl ect no upper limit.

Those goals are substantial, but even before the end of the campaign on June 30, 2013, we will witness some of our campaign priorities come to fruition: doctoral students in new programs in art history and sociology; a dramatic increase in international

A Second Century of No Upper Limit

By David W. Leebron

When President Edgar Odell Lovett spoke in 1912 at the formal opening of what was then the Rice Institute, he was unequivocal about his ambitions for Rice’s future. The new institution, he said, “aspires to university stand-ing of the highest grade.” He spoke not only of science and technology, but also of art, literature and architecture.


engagement with Mexico, Latin America and Asia — and, perhaps, Africa — that will produce knowledge and teach students to serve a global community; and an even more dynamic interaction with our home city of Houston, marked in part by the promise of life-changing research emerging from our enhanced relationships with the Texas Medical Center.

Physically, we already have seen expansion with the Tudor Fieldhouse and Youngkin Center and our hugely popular Raymond and Susan Brochstein Pavilion, and soon we will celebrate the completion of our two new residential colleges, a new physics building and the David and Barbara Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center, which will help support a dynamic educational environment for our students.

We will see students who can attend without undue burdens on their families because of the generous donation of scholarships, and we will see extraordinary professors recruited with the assistance of newly endowed chairs and programs.

These soon-to-be-achieved goals, however, are not the end of our aspirations. In the best of worlds — in our world without upper limits — we would see, as well, a new center for continuing studies and Houston engagement; a new social sciences building that will become part of a powerful new “policy campus” that encompasses the Baker Institute, the School of Social Sciences and the Jones School; a revamped undergraduate curriculum that will produce leaders even more capable of communicating across disciplines and cultures to address the challenges of our time; a new center for the arts to provide a vibrant link between the talents of our students and

the community of Houston; a global health program that brings pre-vention and cures to the most impoverished and remote parts of the world; and a new opera house that provides a rich medium for the new young voices who will become the great talents of tomorrow.

We must lay the groundwork for these endeavors now to ensure, as we look farther in the future, that it will be here, at Rice, where solutions are discovered to address our energy needs and envi-ronmental challenges; that it will be here where we see new and effective solutions for the treatment of cancer; that it will be here where insights into human migration and cultural interaction lead us to more effective public policies; that it will be here where we unleash the foundational principles of religious tolerance that will build greater peace in our world — in short, that it will be at Rice where our understanding of our planet and our universe reaches new heights.

To accomplish those things, we must continue to set “no up-per limit” — no restriction on what our students will achieve, no

boundary for the growth and application of human knowledge and understanding, no limit to what we can contribute to our world today and in the future.

The universe of knowledge and achievement lies before us. It is our chance — our privilege — to educate and explore in ways that will create a new and better world. For this great opportunity that stands before us, the people of Rice have aspired and worked for almost a century. Let us live up to those aspirations. With your help, we will.

“We must continue to set ‘no upper limit’ — no restriction on what our students will achieve, no boundary for the growth and application of human knowledge and understanding, no limit to what we can contribute to our world today and in the future.”

—David W. Leebron

24 www.rice.edu/ricemagazine24

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Rice: Living Its Vision for the Second Century

By Christopher Dow


Few universities can claim the kind of loyalty Rice does, and that loyalty comes from the value that Rice has added to the personal lives of not just its students and alumni, but also its faculty and staff. It’s impossible to keep a note of pride out of your voice when you tell someone that you graduated from Rice or teach or work here. It’s also gratifying that Rice’s excellence is recognized by independent sources. Organizations that rank universities routinely place Rice among the best: among the top 20 in the United States and among the top 100 globally. (See “Top 20” and “Top 200” on Page 6.)

Rice also is rated a best value among universities. Usually, this refers to the quality of the educational experience compared with the amount of money a student has to spend to get that education. By that metric, Rice is undoubtedly a best value among its peers. Princeton Review and Kiplinger’s both just rated Rice as the No. 4 best value in private higher education.

But Rice is a best value in a great number of other ways, too. One is the quality of the research that goes on here — not just quality in the abstract, but a tangibly real quality that enhances the lives of real people in a real world. This has recently been attested to by the Patent Board, which ranks patent portfolios held by companies and institutions of higher education and judges Rice head and shoulders above its nearest competitor. (See “Patently Best” on Page 37.)

But even patents can seem like an ab-straction, so let’s bring it down to real terms. Cell phones and other wireless communica-tions are based on technology developed at Rice. ATM machines were pioneered by a Rice graduate. The fi rst heart pump was developed in part by Rice engineers, as is the most recent innovation in the fi eld. (See “Heart of the Matter” on Page 11.) The discovery of buckminsterfuller-ene at Rice launched the nanotechnology revolution. And in-depth studies of social groups, political organizations and cultural

constructs that are under way here promise a greater understanding of how humans behave and interact. Obvious examples are Stephen Klineberg’s Houston Area Survey, the longest-running in-depth demographic survey of a major American urban center; the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life; and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, which has become one of the world’s leading think tanks and a magnet for global political leaders as well as for important political and economic research.

Seasoned researchers aren’t the only ones making contributions. Among universi-ties, Rice has the highest percentage of prestigious CAREER Awards, which are given to promising young researchers in a variety of fi elds. (See “Making a CAREER of It” on Page 8.) Equally astounding are our undergraduate students, who are not just winning awards, but who are doing cutting-edge research with far-ranging consequences. One example is the students in the Rice 360º program, who are creating medical technologies that will revolutionize health care in the developing world. (See “Global Health” on Page 32.) Another is Libby Stephens, who is working to develop a way to grow replacement heart valves using the patient’s own tissue. (See “Help for Young Hearts” on Page 20.)

Every day, you use or depend on something that owes its existence to Rice research, and that situation will only amplify in the years to come. While no one knows what the future holds, we do know that getting there will cost time and money. We may not be able to do much about time, but the Centennial Campaign will help with the money, which, in turn, will aid Rice in acquiring the resources it needs to move for-ward into the next century and to add value to lives not just here, but around the world.

What makes it important to raise money for Rice in these admittedly diffi cult economic times? The truth is, the current economic malaise will pass. The real issue is the future into which all of us are moving

and the viability of institutions that will edu-cate us, support us, heal us and lead us as we take that inevitable journey. The viability of institutions like Rice University.

That viability is the central reason for the Centennial Campaign, which has its genesis in President David W. Leebron’s 2005 Call to Conversation. Leebron queried all constituents of the university — alumni, faculty, students, administrators, staff, friends of the university and leaders in the Houston community at large — in an effort to gain information and opinions that might help him formulate a plan that would establish a fi rm foundation upon which Rice could build in the decades to come. That gave rise to the Vision for the Second Century, a 10-point strategy for Rice to accomplish its goals that, in turn, has been distilled into three major campaign initiatives. (See “Three Big Ideas” on the following pages.)

The fi rst aims to transform extraordi-nary students into extraordinary leaders. This has long been one of Rice’s deeply held commitments, and the Centennial Campaign will continue to fuel under-graduate and graduate education to prepare the next generation of leaders to make a distinctive impact in the world. The second initiative involves facing challenges and generating solutions. This means that the Centennial Campaign will support extensive investment in Rice’s research enterprise so that we can put our interdisciplinary and multi-institutional collaborations to work to solve problems that face us all. And third is what we refer to as learning and leading locally and globally. In a nutshell, the Centennial Campaign will foster partner-ships with leading institutions in Houston and across the world that will benefi t our students and faculty and extend the univer-sity’s local-to-global reach.

We usually think of value as spending a little less, but sometimes it means spending a little more — at least initially. Buying a prod-uct in bulk, for example, requires a larger initial outlay but saves money in the long run. And I think of the times I’ve purchased a product because it was cheap, only to discover it didn’t work properly, which forced me to return to the store to spend more money on a better replacement. Finally, there is this simple fact: If we expect returns in the future — whether fi nancial or of the other sorts of value — we must invest even when it may be inconvenient.

Rice has a reputation as a stronghold of academic and research excellence precisely because it lives up to its association with all the senses of the word “value”. But it achieved that excellence through adherence to the principle of “no upper limit.” As Rice enters the 21st century, it will continue that trajectory, not because it strives to be as good as it was in the 20th, but because it promises to be even better.

Rice University’s Centennial Campaign,which kicked off in November, is the most ambitious fundraising effort in the university’s history. Its goal is to raise $1 billion by June 30, 2013, the end of the academic year that marks Rice’s 100th anniversary. But the campaign isn’t really about a milestone birthday or about economic resources. It’s about value, which isn’t strictly a fi nancial matter because we also have to ask what it means to have value, what is the value of the work we do, and what do we value about ourselves and our world? It’s about the mission of Rice and the university’s ability to carry out that mission as it embarks on its second century — a century that promises fantastic advances in the very disciplines in which Rice excels. And ultimately, it’s about the people who support Rice and inspire others to get involved.

As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to pathbreaking research, unsurpassed teaching and contributions to the betterment of our world. It seeks to fulfi ll this mission by cultivating a diverse community of learning and discovery that produces leaders across the spectrum of human endeavor.


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A Vision For Rice University’s Second Century


Great cities and great universities must inspire and support each other. Houston, the fourth-largest city in the United States, is a lively urban center that boasts rich diversity, a vibrant business community, distinguished arts and cultural institutions, and an international center for two particu-larly critical disciplines — health care and energy. The city’s geography and multicultural population make it a gateway to the international commu-nity and an ideal setting in which to prepare our students for leadership in a global workforce. Rice’s multi-national and multidisciplinary efforts have laid the foundation for a unique community invigorated by internation-al students and faculty, stimulated by faculty-driven research collaborations and infused with opportunities for students to explore unfamiliar cultures and perspectives, both in Houston and abroad.

Learning and leading locally and globally.

$ 2 9 0 m i l l i o n

Three Big Ideas

Rice is small enough to adapt to chang-ing educational and research environ-ments, collegial enough to ignore the usual “silos” of discipline and depart-ment, friendly enough to welcome new ideas, historic enough to have a track record and young enough to be will-ing to try new things. For these reasons — and because Rice scholars embrace the opportunity to be involved in in-terdisciplinary, out-of-the-box work — Rice has been unusually productive in generating creative solutions to tough challenges. Ultimately, even the most practical solutions have to be built on a solid foundation. The Centennial Campaign looks at building that foun-dation by investing in basic research and by pooling our considerable intel-lectual resources into idea-percolating, interdisciplinary centers. When the campaign is complete, our areas of promise will become our newest ex-amples of research preeminence.

Facing challenges. Generating solutions.

$ 3 1 0 m i l l i o n

The next generation of leaders will face incredible challenges that defy answers from any single discipline and demand innovative, sometimes unconventional, approaches. As the stakes continue to rise and the problems become more urgent, ex-traordinary thinkers must also be-come extraordinary leaders. At the heart of the Centennial Campaign are deep-seated commitments to preserving Rice’s distinctive under-graduate and graduate education and to preparing our students to lead in a rapidly changing world. These commitments shine through in a number of campaign priorities, all of which are designed to give our students the tools and the confi -dence to emerge as leaders.

Transforming extraordinary students into extraordinary leaders.

$ 4 0 0 m i l l i o n

Three Big Ideas The Vision for the Second Century can be distilled into three principal areas.

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A CONVERSATION Centennial Campaign co-chairs Susanne M. Glasscock and Robert B. Tudor discuss what’s important for Rice and how the campaign will move the university forward.


A CONVERSATION

“I’m excited about Rice and want to see Rice continue to be recognized as an integral part of the city of Houston.”

Why Rice? Why Now?

Susanne: I am absolutely fascinated with the concept of the Vision for the Second Century and Rice’s 100th anniversary celebration in 2012. I’m excited about Rice and want to see the university continue to be recognized as an integral part of the city of Houston.

Robert: Good things don’t just happen. We should be fi ghting to make Rice better every day. That’s what the Centennial Campaign is all about — ensuring that 20 years from now, 100 years from now, this university is that much better. And we will. We must.

Susanne: This campaign is certainly an ambitious undertaking, particularly given the current economic climate. Our total alumni base is less than the enrollment at some major universities, and yet we’re taking on this major goal. At fi rst, I was hesitant about it, but you have to consider that we’re looking forward to another century. We have the added advantage of having so many early supporters step up. We’re over half way to our goal with fi ve years still to go. This is very encouraging.

Robert: We’re going to have to dig deeper than most. The truth is, if we’re going to

reach our goal, almost everyone we’re asking help from is going to have to say “yes”. But I think that speaks to our aspiration of no upper limit. We could go along and be what we’ve been forever, and it probably wouldn’t take this much money, but I don’t think that’s what Rice is about.

What does “no upper limit” mean to you?

Robert: It’s all about getting better. The world is changing around us and universi-ties are more competitive than ever. One of the truly inspiring things about Rice is that aspirations have always been and continue to be high. The campaign captures that very nicely.

Susanne: This was a radical notion at the time, and it set the tone for the university. There’s a sense of inevitability in Lovett’s vision, a push to move forward. From the beginning, Rice said, “There’s no upper limit.” Whatever you want to do, you can do it.

Why have you chosen to stay involved with Rice?

Robert: Rice has made my life richer. As a student, I learned how to think critically, and that changed my life. I owe a lot to

Centennial Campaign co-chairs Susanne M. Glasscock and Robert B. Tudor discuss what’s important for Rice and how the campaign will move the university forward.

“ It’s all about getting better.

The world is changing

around us and universities are more

competitive than ever.”

—Robert B. Tudor


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that, and I can tell you it doesn’t hap-pen everywhere.

Susanne: As students, we were chal-lenged not only by the faculty, but also by fellow students. For all of us who came out of Rice — there was a sense of accomplishment and a sense that we want this to continue. I stay involved because I want others to have this same challenge. Robert and I share a real sense of duty toward Rice because it has enriched our lives. I went here when there was no tuition, and we have a strong desire to say thank you for all that we’ve received.

Robert: Just being around people who have made their life’s work higher education is fun. They are interesting and passionate, and I fi nd it invigorat-ing. There’s so much intellectual energy and, for that matter, emotional energy that goes into making a really fi ne university, and I like having that in my life in the same way I like having art and sports. It’s fun.

Susanne: And let’s be honest — it’s really exciting to share these opportuni-ties with our fellow alumni and friends. It’s something I really enjoy: getting to know people and helping them fi nd their passions at Rice.

If you can imagine talking to a recent graduate, how would you help them understand why their participation is just as important as yours?

Robert: Being involved and staying connected will make your life richer. It will make your life better. I would also argue that young alums can have a truly disproportionate impact on the vitality of the campaign and the university day to day. One of the goals is to have more people on our campus more often. We’d like for it to feel like a vital place teeming with activity of all sorts. That happens when young alumni are involved.

Susanne: We know the product Rice is putting out — its alumni are the result of it. We want to maintain and further improve it. And with all that is going on at Rice, it’s much easier to involve people because they recognize that the university is truly committed to expanding their horizons.

Robert: One of our country’s very best products is higher education. It’s one of the most important export items for our nation’s economy, wherever you live. But in the same way that manufacturing and fi nancial services

“For all of us who came out of Rice -- there was a sense of accomplishment and a sense that

we want this to continue.”

—Susanne M. Glasscock


Centennial Campaign Web Site

››› t i n y u r l . c o m / 9 o k 8 m l

Vision for the Second Century

››› t i n y u r l . c o m / 8 h u t f 5

“No Upper Limit. Still.” The Centennial Campaign Video

››› t i n y u r l . c o m / 7 g 7 l e 7

Ways to Give

For information on ways to participate in the Centennial Campaign and to learn about the campaign priorities that are most meaningful to you, visit

››› t i n y u r l . c o m / 7 a d x u c

or call Resource Development at

713-348-4600.

“One of the goals is to have more people on our campus more often. We’d like for it to feel like a vital place teeming with activity of all sorts.”

F I N D O U T M O R Eare becoming more competitive, higher education is getting more competitive. We’re being challenged, and we need to get better. As a citizen, I ask, “Where can I make an investment that is important to our country and our future?” Higher education, and Rice, specifi cally, is a re-ally great place to do that.

What is important to preserve?

Susanne: When you read the mission statement and the Vision for the Second Century, undergraduate education is the fi rst thing you see, and one part of that is the college system, because it reinforces the contact between students and faculty. A second mission is Rice’s role as a major research institution, but we must balance the two missions so that undergraduate education isn’t overshadowed.

Robert: We’re balancing this driving com-mitment to education with a desire to be more outward looking, to be more global and to be more a part of the world. When Rice established the Baker Institute, I wondered what is this going to do for the average Rice undergraduate. I thought it was going to be a very graduate student–oriented think tank, but I was wrong. It has dramatically enhanced and broad-ened the undergraduate and graduate experience at Rice.

Susanne: The Shepherd School is another example of this. By integrating music students into the student body, Rice enriches the experience for all students. The board has been very supportive, and we’re in phase one of doing the same kind of thing with the Jones School by introducing the business minor. In time, we will see a similar impact through the BioScience Research Collaborative.

When you think of some of the words that Lovett used to describe the university, he often humanized it, using words like coura-geous, brave, and so forth. How would you describe Rice in more human terms?

Robert: It feels to me that Rice is still very young, particularly if you compare it with the institutions with whom it competes. Being younger is good because it makes change easier and makes us more fl exible.

Susanne: Lovett has been a vital presence in the life of the university. What he said in October 1912 still rings true today. He was such a unique person, and his vision for Rice remains very much alive.

B y D e b o r a h J . A u s m a n

The infl uence of technology on global health is undeniable, but it’s clear that technology alone won’t prevent disease, re-duce infant mortality rates or improve the overall health of people in some of the world’s poorest communities. This is something that Rebecca Richards-Kortum knows from per-sonal experience, but she has some big ideas for solving global health problems, and they’re all about changing the world one Rice undergraduate at a time.

HealthHealthGlobal Taking the Lead

in Education and Prevention



Richards-Kortum, the Stanley C. Moore Pro-fessor of Bioengineering, has learned a lot about the health issues of women in devel-oping countries through her work on new imaging techniques for diagnosing cervical cancer and its precursors. While in these countries, she saw that many women didn’t have access to basic screening programs and other preventative technologies that women elsewhere take for granted.

“There have been many radical tech-nological advances in recent years,” she said, “but they are useless if they’re not affordable or accessible to the people who need them.”

The challenges are deep: How do you help communities prevent waterborne dis-ease if they don’t know that bacteria and other organisms in water cause disease? And how do you deploy modern technology in remote and often harsh environments, where power sources and spare parts are nonexistent?

Since arriving at Rice in 2005, Richards-Kortum has spearheaded two programs to

address these challenges. Beyond Tradi-tional Borders (BTB), funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, began in 2006 and aims to train Rice undergraduates in applying science and technology to global health issues. Richards-Kortum also is lead-ing Rice 360°, a $100 million campuswide initiative launched in 2007 and a priority of the Centennial Campaign. Building on the educational efforts seeded by BTB, Rice

360° incorporates faculty research focused on inventing new health technologies and seeks to create innovative ways to com-mercialize and distribute them in the de-veloping world. Richards-Kortum’s two ini-tiatives have done more than demonstrate the power of this model — they are em-powering Rice undergraduates to quite lit-erally change the world.

Providing Aid That’s Sustainable

Neha Kamat ’08 spent most of her under-graduate career working in the lab of Jenni-fer West, the Isabel C. Cameron Professor

of Bioengineering. While she enjoyed her research projects at Rice, Kamat admits she felt rudderless about where she was going after graduation. “I knew I wanted to do research, but I had no clue how I would apply it as a career,” Kamat said. “Would I work in industry? Would I go into academia?”

All that changed during Kamat’s se-nior year, when she enrolled in BIOE 260:

Introduction to Global Health Issues. One of several courses offered through BTB, it also has become the introductory course in a new global health technologies minor that Rice began offering this fall.

In BIOE 260, students learn about glob-al health challenges — including health de-terminants and key areas of disease burden — and examine case studies to understand why different interventions succeed or fail. The students also work in small groups to solve a real-world problem and have the op-portunity to deliver their solution through BTB internships offered in conjunction with outside partners such as the Baylor College

The challenges are deep: How do you help communities prevent waterborne disease if they don’t know that bacteria and other organisms in water cause disease?

343434 www.rice.edu/ricemagazinewww.rice.edu/ricemagazinewww.rice.edu/ricemagazine

of Medicine’s Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative and SOS Children’s Villages.

Although Kamat is a bioengineering student, she worked with four other BIOE 260 students to develop a microenterprise training program for students at Masiano-keng High School in Lesotho. Microenter-prise is a relatively new concept in foreign aid that calls for training individuals within a community to form businesses that will sell vital commodities such as medicine, clinical services or supplies. Microenterprises not only offer necessary resources in a sustain-able way, they also fuel economic growth by providing jobs to community members.

Kamat and Will Rice sophomore Josh Ozer, who launched a microenterprise stu-dent club at Rice during his freshman year, delivered the microenterprise course in Le-sotho. The course taught basic principles in business planning, marketing and account-ing by dividing students into teams that sold solar fl ashlights in the community. Part of the proceeds from the sales supported the school shop, and each team kept a percent-age as profi t. By the end of the fi ve-week course, students had raised around $500 to start the school shop and had built capital to invest in their own enterprises.

Kamat also took the bioengineering capstone design course, in which her team of bioengineers and electrical engineers produced one of the top design projects in the George R. Brown School of Engineer-ing: an intravenous drip monitor and con-troller specifi cally designed for pediatric pa-tients in the developing world. Kamat cred-its both experiences, particularly her time in Lesotho, with providing focus for her gradu-ate work at the University of Pennsylvania. She now plans to stay in academia and, like Richards-Kortum, fi nd ways to develop sus-tainable global health technologies.

“Before this program, I only saw the opportunity to make an impact through technology,” Kamat said. “But the truth is that technology doesn’t solve problems. You have to take into account the social, physi-cal and economic issues that infl uence how the technology will be adopted.”

Undergrad Teamwork

The drip monitor developed by Kamat’s team was just one of the global health projects undertaken by students in the bioengineering capstone design course this year. Traditionally, capstone courses offer undergraduate engineers the chance to do the type of work they will be charged with after graduation. But now, thanks to

the global health initiatives championed by Richards-Kortum, the technical design experience in bioengineering is being en-riched with know-how from the social and political sciences.

Through a new course in the global health technologies minor, nonengineering students have the opportunity to participate on bioengineering capstone design teams. Martel seniors Tiffany Yeh, a cognitive sci-ences major, and Katy Miller, double ma-joring in English and history, are the fi rst nonengineers to take advantage of the op-portunity. Both bring signifi cant, hands-on experience in global health issues to the course. Last year, they were members of a BIOE 260 team that created an interactive module to teach second-grade students in Haiti about basic hygiene and the causes of infections and illness.

“Our team exemplifi ed how important interdisciplinary knowledge is when work-ing on global health problems,” Yeh said. “We had insights from the humanities, science and psychology on our team, and all of those perspectives helped us move forward.”

The team ultimately developed an array of activities for its unit. T-shirts with pictures of human organs Velcroed to them helped students visualize what was under their skin. A hand-washing song and dance taught hygiene. Students also learned how to purify water and looked at water under a microscope to see microorganisms. Fi-nally, students demonstrated what they had learned by performing skits for their parents that explained how the immune system works. After implementing the project in Haiti, Yeh and teammate Meagan Barry ’08 went on to work on water sourc-ing issues in Guatemala. Miller spent the summer in Geneva researching the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS programs in the Caribbean.

Maria Oden, director of the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen and instructor for the bioengineering capstone design course, noted that bringing together stu-dents from diverse backgrounds can lead to more relevant and successful project outcomes.

“Just because the end product needs to be inexpensive or simple to use doesn’t mean that the technology that goes into that product will be easy to develop or in-expensive,” said Oden. “Sometimes these low-tech solutions require the most inno-vation, and they defi nitely require insights about the environment and culture in which they will be used. By bringing in students

Designing Appropriate Science and Technology Platforms to Improve Global Health

To generate solutions to the world’s most diffi cult health challenges, we are leveraging Rice’s lead-ing expertise in bioengineering and nanosensors and its rich partnerships with the Texas Medical Center to expand research programs in point-of-care diagnostics and point-of-use water treatment. Incorporating both of these research perspectives, which share common materials and questions, into the design of new global health technologies, holds particularly transformative potential for the future of global health.

Commercializing and Distributing New Technologies

If we are to lead in improving health and alleviating poverty around the world, we must commercialize and distribute technologies in the regions where they are most needed. Local distribution networks and partnerships can generate economic growth and innovation in poor regions, while improving health. Rice 360° is drawing on the diverse experi-ence of faculty from the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, the James A. Baker III In-stitute for Public Policy, and the Schools of Social Sciences, Humanities, Natural Sciences and Engi-neering to determine how to make technologies available, meaningful and useful to people around the world.

Training Students to Solve Global Challenges

As part of Rice’s distinctive commitment to trans-forming extraordinary students into extraordinary leaders, Rice 360°’s educational programs, like the Beyond Traditional Borders initiative, use hands-on activities to engage undergraduates directly in solving global health challenges. Rice 360° empowers students to put their ideas into action, training them to lead efforts to prevent disease, improve health and reduce poverty in poor com-munities throughout the world.

Rice 360°’s Funding Priorities


from across the university with expertise accumulated through global health course work and associated internships, we en-able our design teams to accomplish these innovations and create more relevant and usable devices.”

Taking It to the Real World

The link between BTB and the design course also adds reality and urgency to what could easily be viewed merely as academic exer-cises. Plus, students have the opportunity not only to implement their design projects but also to pass on their knowledge to fu-ture fi eld and design teams.

One bioengineering capstone design project that has benefi ted from student co-operation over time is the diagnostic Lab-in-a-Backpack. Over a span of two years, a total of 12 Rice undergraduates worked on the backpack. Initially developed by a fi ve-member capstone bioengineering design team in 2006, the backpack was fi eld-tested in Honduras by volunteers with the Baylor Shoulder to Shoulder Program. Last year, a second group of seven students, including two teams in BIOE 260, made several im-provements to the backpack and prepared it for a second fi eld test in Lesotho. One of these seven was Jenna Hook, a Martel se-nior who took the backpack to Lesotho and gathered more information on modifying it to help individuals in the different commu-nities she visited.

“Most of the clinics in Lesotho had electricity — what they didn’t have were supplies and equipment,” Hook explained. “I collected information from health work-ers everywhere I went because it is really important to understand the need in order to fi nd the best ways to meet it.”

Such on-the-fl y observations and mod-ifi cations are what make the global health course work and internships so valuable to students.

“There are many programs around where students can get experience work-ing in developing countries, but none of them place so much responsibility, ulti-mately, on you as a student,” said Barry, one of the developers of the Haiti educa-tion module who is working in Mali this fall with a Howard Hughes Medical Insti-tute international research scholar on ma-laria drug resistance. “In the Rice global health program, students are the ones coming up with the plans and implement-ing them, and we report our experiences to others at Rice and to our partners so that they can do it better next time. We are where the buck stops, and it’s amaz-ing to have this type of an impact on the world as undergraduates.”

Sophie Kim ’08 concurred. Kim imple-mented an HIV/AIDS awareness project in Lesotho in 2007 and this year coordinated a community needs assessment there. She also worked this summer with Healthcare for the Homeless — Houston to determine

Lab-in-a-BackpackLab-in-a-Backpack is a battery-powered tool kit doctors can literally strap on and carry in to otherwise inaccessible villages, where they help provide much-needed testing and treatment. Eight of the packs have been de-signed and built over the past two years by 12 students involved in Rice’s Beyond Traditional Borders global health initiative. The packs use off-the-shelf and custom-designed technologies, including a microscope, an otoscope, a pulse oximeter, a power control unit, a solar panel, basic medical supplies and much more. The prototype was tested in remote locations over the summer, and seven backpacks remain in the fi eld in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Botswana, Lesotho and Malawi.

how homeless people in Houston utilize health care services. This fall, as a Fulbright Scholar, she began studying Toronto’s HIV/AIDS populations at the Center for Re-search on Inner City Health.

“You can let what you see while work-ing in this program frustrate you, or you can let it fi ll you with a stronger drive and a big-ger purpose,” Kim said. “Working in Leso-tho changed the way I did everything my senior year. I studied harder for exams and did markedly better in my classes. That’s because I had something bigger I was working toward. It wasn’t about getting into medical school anymore. It was about help-ing people better themselves.”

Kamat said that sense of ownership is one of the reasons behind the program’s success.

“There’s no safety net in this program,” she said. “If your program doesn’t work, it fails. That’s it. I put more time into the mi-croenterprise project than any other course in my college career, because I knew that it was my responsibility. You could call it a burden, but it’s a burden that trains stu-dents to be global leaders.”

Learn more:››› r ice360. r ice.edu››› beyondtradi t ionalborders . r ice.edu


“My dad was always telling me to get a patent, but I just thought, ‘They’ve already patented everything on beer cans!’”

That was back when Nila Bhakuni, fol-lowing in the professional footsteps of her father (who has 17 patents), was a research and development engineer for the alumi-num manufacturer Alcoa. These days, as director of Rice’s Offi ce of Technology Transfer (OTT), Bhakuni is at the very cen-ter of a whirlwind of information, all part of the process by which Rice-born technolo-gies become real-world products.

She mused recently about how wonder-ful it would be if one particular technology that has passed through OTT becomes a reality. It’s a nanotech-based cure for cancer, and human trials of the treatment are under way.

Such a breakthrough would be a fi tting tribute to the progress the offi ce has made in pushing discoveries from the lab to the factory. Established on the foundation of the late Richard Smalley’s pioneering discoveries in nanotechnology — ever hear of buckyballs? — OTT has championed inventions ranging from the sensational to the sublime. But every one of them has the potential to make the world a better place, and as OTT enters its second decade, it plans to bring more attention to the marvel-ous research going on at Rice, and then to move it beyond the hedges.

Research Clearinghouse

Bhakuni explained that OTT functions as a kind of clearinghouse for Rice’s early stage research. Its primary function is to facilitate

the patenting of technologies developed at Rice, then to help market and manage the process of licensing them and to collect the associated fees. It’s a complex and ex-pensive process. Patenting a new idea can take years, and it costs at least $30,000 just to fi le with the feds. Then there are ongoing maintenance fees to protect one’s intellectual property.

“Most patents are black holes,” said James Tour, who knows fi rsthand the value of OTT’s assistance. Tour, the Chao Professor of Chemistry at Rice, used OTT’s services in co-founding NanoComposites Inc., a Houston company that processes nanotubes into a variety of materials remarkable for their strength, fl exibility and durability.

“Few technologies generate the in-come it takes to pay back what was spent on patenting them,” said Tour. “Once in a while you get a blockbuster, but that’s very rare.”

Without an offi ce of technology trans-fer, he said, “professors often will leave to exploit the technology they want to de-velop. Working with OTT, they can have a role and maintain their professorships.”

Despite the fi nancial risk, the potential rewards to the university are enormous. The likes of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York University pull in hundreds of millions of dollars in li-censing fees, often on the success of just a few mature technologies. And while Rice earned approximately $1.2 million in fees last year, that was more than double the university’s annual licensing revenue four years ago when Bhakuni arrived after her stints in technology transfer at Carnegie

Mellon University and Harvard.“The initial slope of success is not

that high, but the slope rises sharply once momentum builds,” said James Coleman, Rice’s vice provost for research, who feels the university is well-posi-tioned for the future. “Our fi rst 10 years have brought us right to the point where I expect to see that sharp increase, and I’m really excited.”

Off the Ground and Into the Marketplace

Fees and revenue are only part of the pic-ture. OTT has been increasingly success-ful in guiding industrial research contracts to Rice labs, which signifi cantly aids in the recruitment of excellent faculty. This also raises Rice’s profi le as a generator of tech-based businesses.

“Rice is in the top 10 of all universi-ties in the number of startup companies created based on Rice technologies when normalized to our size,” Coleman said. “The university has been recognized as having the best portfolio of nanotechnolo-gies in the country.”

Coleman said that cooperation among faculty researchers, OTT and the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, which holds events that put researchers and their discoveries in front of venture capitalists and industry, is a real strength. And that kind of interac-tion is picking up speed as Rice pursues its strategy to become an elite institution in the realm of commercializing ideas.

Nanospectra Biosciences Inc. is an excellent example of Rice’s forward-looking vision. The Houston company

Turning ResearchTurning ResearchInto Reality By Mike Williams

is hot on the trail of a method to deliver cancer-killing AuroShells™ right where they’re needed in a patient’s body. The technique is based on nanotechnology research led by Rice professors Naomi Halas and Jennifer West. “The trial we’re in now, which is focusing on head and neck cancers, allows us to treat up to 15 patients,” said Nanospectra Biosciences CEO J. Donald Payne. “We expect it to be completed by early 2009.”

Nanospectra would not exist without the Offi ce of Technology Transfer. “They were instrumental in the formation of the company and really helped carry it through those diffi cult early years,” Payne said.

OTT continues to provide support by protecting the patents and, as a share-holder, helping to refi ne the company’s mission. “Once we’ve proved the technol-ogy works in humans and move to the marketing phase,” Payne said, “we expect to work further with Rice to expand the development portfolio.”

The Right Thing to Do

Wade Adams, director of the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, appreciates OTT’s ability to take patent pressures off his plate. “OTT gives us more time to focus on the research,” he said.

It’s telling, said Adams, that by 2005, “the number of patents submitted by nanotechnology alone gave Rice the most valuable patent portfolio of all other universities in the country. It’s really remarkable when you consider that No. 2

was the entire University of California system. The quality of our patents is second to none.”

Though OTT sometimes says “no” to a researcher, Bhakuni said there also are times the offi ce will pony up to patent an idea that seems unlikely to return the investment, just because “it’s the right thing to do” and there is a defi nite need that the idea addresses. This willingness is especially important in light of President David W. Leebron’s vision for bolstering Rice’s ability to help solve the world’s problems.

“Maybe that means we make a ton of money, or maybe it means we have just a couple of well-known products that really make an impact,” Bhakuni said. “And there is that potential. Nanospectra’s technique to kill cancer might work as well as hoped. That really would be marvelous, and I’d love for them to say that Rice was the catalyst.”

Learn more about the Offi ce of Technology Transfer:››› ott.rice.edu

For a list of technologies currently available for licensing, visit:››› rice.wellspringsoftware.net

OTT functions as a kind of clearing-house for Rice’s early stage research. Its primary function is to facilitate the patenting of technologies developed at Rice, then to help market and manage the process of licensing them and to collect the associ-ated fees.

Nila Bhakuni

Patently BestWhen it comes to the impact on in-dustry of its accumulated patents, Rice University has proved itself pretty inventive. According to the Patent Board, a Chicago fi rm that ranks companies for the prowess of their properties, Rice is No. 1 among research universities in “Industry Impact.”

“Rice researchers work at the cutting edge of their fi elds, so it’s not surprising that their discoveries are having a large impact on technological innovation,” said Vice Provost for Research James Coleman. “The Patent Board’s analysis confi rms that impression.”

The company gathered and analyzed ref-erences to universities and their patents in data from government and industry sources to quantify how infl uential a company’s patent portfolio is on the development of technologies in other companies, compared to the rest of the industry.

The Patent Board noted that while Rice has “the lowest volume of patents, they are infl uential, which is not surprising considering the majority are nanotechnol-ogy related.” It specifi cally cited research into optically activated nanoshells being used in human cancer trials by Houston’s Nanospectra Biosciences Inc., a company founded on Rice technology.

“Rice has only been doing the patent game really seriously for the last de-cade,” said Wade Adams, director of Rice University’s Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, “and this recognition is a real testimony to the inventiveness of the nanotechnology faculty and students here at Rice. It also demonstrates the aggressiveness of the university’s Office of Technology Transfer in getting patents issued and doing it in a way that they’re rated the most power-ful of all the portfolios. That’s a fantastic achievement.”

—Mike Williams



In the 1966 science fi ction fi lm “Fantastic Voyage,” a team of doctors were minia-turized and injected into a patient to repair a blood clot in his brain. Along the way, they journeyed through alveoli and arteries and fought off white blood cor-puscles. The special effects were kitschy by today’s standards — materials like Cheerios and strawberry milk were used to achieve the fi lm’s biological visuals — but for its day, “Fantastic Voyage” was incredible, creepy and fascinating. “The Great Indoors,” an installation at Rice Gallery by Aurora Robson, achieved a similar effect as the artist took low-tech rubbish and transformed it into a discon-certing wonderland.

Using 15,000 stacked, shredded and riveted plastic bottles, Robson crafted an environment of translucent tunnels and chambers. Walking through it felt like an exploration of the body of a giant organism. To fi nd inspiration for her work, Robson researched medical il-lustrations and explored the Centers for Disease Control Web site. The colors of her constructions — visceral reds, pinks and greens — lent a fantastical feel to the work as light passed through the vibrant plastic forms.

In creating her work, Robson had to wash each plastic bottle and remove its label and any residual adhesive. She then cut the bottles and used heat to bend and stretch them and rivets to fas-ten them together. Green ginger ale and

Photos: Nash Baker © nashbaker.com

Sprite bottles found their way into the mix, but when Robson wanted to vary the hues of the clear bottles she took out her airbrush to give her construc-tions smooth, translucent tints.

Ribbed water bottles were linked together to create arching tubes that resemble ringed tracheas. Smaller tubes looked like capillaries. Networks of bottle bottoms created clusters of cells and other physiological features, and organic tunnels led to a domed center chamber where a glowing red, heart-like organ dangled. Other vaguely spherical constructions resembled giant viruses, many of which were, like the “heart,” illuminated by solar-powered LED lights.

There was an unobtrusive environ-mental angle to Robson’s work. Eight out of 10 plastic water bottles become landfi ll waste, and even when they are recycled, the recycling process itself consumes energy. Robson not only recycled the bottles in a creative way, she also used nontoxic water-based paint and solar-powered lights to further “green” her art. She used her materials so beautifully and transformed them so effectively, however, that “eco-art” was the installation’s least obvious aspect.

In creating a world that evoked the amazing internal environments of our bodies, Robson gave visitors tickets to a fantastic voyage they could take for themselves.

—Kelly Klaasmeyer

Journey Within

There was an unobtrusive environ-mental angle to Robson’s work. Eight out of 10 plastic water bottles become landfi ll waste, and even when they are recycled, the recycling process itself consumes energy. Robson not only recycled the bottles in a creative way, she also used nontoxic water-based paint and solar-powered lights to further “green” her art. She used her materials so beautifully and transformed them so effectively, however, that “eco-art” was the installation’s least obvious aspect.

In creating a world that evoked the amazing internal environments of our

Using 15,000 stacked, shredded and riveted plastic bottles, Robson crafted an environment of translucent tunnels and chambers. Walking through it felt like an exploration of the body of a giant organism. To fi nd inspiration for her work, Robson researched medical il-lustrations and explored the Centers for Disease Control Web site. The colors of her constructions — visceral reds, pinks and greens — lent a fantastical feel to the work as light passed through the

In creating her work, Robson had to wash each plastic bottle and remove its label and any residual adhesive. She then cut the bottles and used heat to bend and stretch them and rivets to fas-ten them together. Green ginger ale and

bodies, Robson gave visitors tickets to a fantastic voyage they could take for themselves.

mental angle to Robson’s work. Eight out of 10 plastic water bottles become landfi ll waste, and even when they are recycled, the recycling process itself consumes energy. Robson not only recycled the bottles in a creative way, she also used nontoxic water-based paint and solar-powered lights to further “green” her art. She used her materials so beautifully and transformed them so effectively, however, that “eco-art” was the installation’s least obvious aspect.

amazing internal environments of our bodies, Robson gave visitors tickets to a fantastic voyage they could take for themselves.

Robson took low-tech

rubbish and transformed

it into a disconcerting wonderland.

Rice Magazine • No. 2 • 2009 39Photos: Nash Baker © nashbaker.com

Mutant GraphicsOn the walls of Rice Gallery, an angry ice cream cone sported boxing gloves, an atomic mushroom cloud erupted from a baby car-riage and a turtle wore a human skull as his shell.

Over the last eight years, artist Michael A. Salter has collected more than 300 oddball logos, absurd pictograms and bizarre product images. He also scav-enges consumer leftovers — in particular, Styrofoam formed to protect electronics. Salter brought his fi nds together in unexpected ways in his Rice Gallery in-stallation, “too much,” in which a giant robot made from cast-off Styrofoam occupied most of the fl oor space while the gallery walls were strewn with the collected images.

Salter’s collection of graphic icon oddities was transformed into monochromatic vinyl appliqués that he adhered to the gray gallery walls like bizarre wallpaper. The host of conceptual misfi res raised in-triguing questions about their purpose and those who designed them. Why is an ant being injected by a hy-podermic needle? Why does a bare foot wear a cow-boy hat on its big toe? What in the world are these images trying to communicate? The drawings looked like mutant graphics cobbled together by a designer who has only recently arrived on our planet.

In the midst of this, Salter’s giant white “Styrobot” slumped against the wall in a corner of the gallery. Its scale was menacing: 16 feet in height while seated, it was far too tall to actually stand within the gallery. It looked as if Salter’s creation was temporarily de-activated, or maybe it was just overwhelmed by the gallery’s visual cacophony.

Salter constructed the “Styrobot” from 3,000 cu-bic feet of Styrofoam packaging, much of it saved and donated by Rice University employees. All the divots, bumps, indentations and cavities of the Styrofoam were specifi cally designed to accommodate particu-lar products. Removed from their intended purpose, they conveyed the same sense of bewilderment as Salter’s collected images. The bizarre logos read as frustrated attempts to communicate, while the enormous robot, crafted from leftovers, had a Frankenstein-like quality.

“too much” made the point that, while visual overload is grating, the physical overload of the junk we make, buy and toss is much more than a psychic assault: It is a tangible environmental threat. In draft-ing the Styrofoam into service for his art, Salter gave it a new purpose — at least until it was recycled at the close of the exhibition.

Salter also gave new life to his collection of dys-functional iconography by using it to confront us with the excesses of our consumer culture. “too much” reads as a cautionary tale in which seemingly innocu-ous things become a gargantuan monster beyond our control.

—Kelly Klaasmeyer

Arts

Salter constructed the “Styrobot”

from 3,000 cubic feet of Styrofoam

packaging, much of it saved and donated

by Rice University employees.

“Emotions, the human elements, the family drama – they’re a common thread. Things are ambiguous or unfi nished in life, in family. There’s an inevitability of change.”

—Chris Eska


From Easy A to A+ Career

Premed major Chris Eska ’98 wasn’t looking for a complete change of direction. He was simply looking for a class that would be a good way to blow off steam and help boost his GPA. A fi lm course looked like just the ticket, but he quickly discovered that it was anything but an “easy A.” And by the time it was over, he knew he was going to have to change his major.

Eska’s passion for fi lmmaking fueled him to write, direct and edit “August Evening,” an award-winning feature fi lm about an undocumented Mexican farm worker in the United States and his young, widowed daughter-in-law as they navigate life changes. The fi lm’s dialogue is entirely in Spanish.

Eska and crew were able to keep the budget low by fi lming in his hometown of Gonzales, Texas. The entire community came together to support Eska’s fi lm, donating on-set meals and appearing in supporting cast roles. He also kept costs down by using relatively unknown actors who were sold on the beauty of the script and the chance to be part of an important project.

Eska also found help in his Rice connections. His co-producer, Jason Wehling ’98, left his job at PBS to work on “August Evening” and brought his PBS colleague Connie Hill with him. Wehling also called on Joseph McKeel ’02 to operate the boom microphone, Joseph Maloney ’98 to help with graphic design and Andrew Hughes ’00 to do some voice-over work.

Eska said that most fi lms are wrapped up in tidy pack-ages that don’t refl ect life, and he tries to infuse his fi lms with emotions not often seen in feature fi lms.

“Emotions, the human elements, the family drama — they’re a common thread,” Eska said. “Things are ambigu-ous or unfi nished in life, in family. There’s an inevitability of change.”

There’s a certain inevitability, too, about the many awards the fi lm has won. Among them are the John Cassavetes Award for Best Feature Under $500,000 at the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards, the Target Filmmaker Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival, the Maverick Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2007 Woodstock Film Festival and the Opera Prima Jury Award at the International Latino Film Festival — San Francisco Bay Area.

Eska attributes the success of “August Evening” to its ability to capture true-to-life themes and relate them across cultures.

“I didn’t make it exclusively for the Latino community,” he said. “I didn’t make it to be political. However, if it changes the way people think, then I’m happy.”

While Eska continues to promote “August Evening,” which has been picked up by distributor Maya Entertainment group, he’s also hard at work on scripts about cave diving, the Mexican mafi a and rural life in India.

“I want to change and do something radically different with my next fi lm,” Eska said.

—Jessica Stark

For more information on “August Evening”:››› www.augustevening.com


Last fall, Brice’s trajectory brought him to Hollywood to accept an Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for Reality Programming for his work on the PBS fi lm “Carrier.” A 10-hour series produced by Mel Gibson, “Carrier” follows a six-month de-ployment of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier during the Iraq War.

Brice’s remarkable journey began when Rice Media Center Director James Blue walked into his high school classroom some 30 years ago. “Blue showed us a 16-millime-ter fi lm he shot in Africa and talked about what he did,” Brice recalled. “I thought, ‘I want to do that.’ The Media Center at Rice was my launching pad.”

Spending hours and hours synching au-dio and video wasn’t without pressure, but Brice loved it, and his dedication attracted attention.

“I would see him late at night in the editing room focused on his work,” said

Brian Huberman, chair of the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts, “and it was clear that he was committed to fi lmmaking.”

Sometimes that commitment has taken extreme forms. In making a fi lm about ra-cial violence spurred by an incident on the Texas coast, Brice, Huberman and a cam-eraman drove around back roads at night,

unarmed, to fi lm a Ku Klux Klan induction rally. Upon arriving, they were immediately surrounded by men with rifl es.

“I had a really good chance to see him in action,” Huberman said with a laugh, adding that it was one of the most memo-rable experiences he’s had as a teacher.

Since then, Huberman has had other opportunities to see Brice in action — most recently when they worked together on A&E’s “First 48,” which Brice has produced for two years. The series follows homicide detectives as they try to solve murder cases.

Brice admits that the documentary

medium rarely takes comfort and safety into account.

“The challenge of making a documen-tary is fi nding a way to do your best work and be open to discovery when you are uncomfortable, when you’re not eating right, when it’s 110 degrees and there’s no shade in sight, when the weather is fogging up your goggles on an aircraft carrier and you have no way of knowing exactly what kind of picture you’re shooting.”

But Brice doesn’t complain. Instead he talks about the awe he’s felt and the privileges he’s had.

“If you really like what you’re doing, those trying conditions are all worth it for the chance at the best pictures ever,” Brice said. “You try to capture things that few have ever witnessed before. I’ve seen the Pacifi c Ocean where it’s seven miles deep — it’s a color blue you can’t describe.”

—Jessica Stark

Read more about Mark Brice’s work on the PBS reality series “Carrier”:››› www.pbs.org/weta/carrier

Mark Brice ’80 has slept under the stars in Africa, crossed through war zones in Burundi, trailed an anti-kidnapping unit in Brazil and lived aboard an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.

“You try to capture things that few have ever witnessed before. I’ve seen the Pacifi c Ocean where it’s seven miles deep – it’s a color blue you can’t describe.”

Wins EmmyWins EmmyRice Alum

—Mark Brice

The documentary medium rarely takes comfort and safety into account.

Arts

Gifts of ArtIt might seem odd to devote the lush opulence of a coffee table art book to a couple of art connoisseurs, but when the connoisseurs are John and Dominique de Menil, the format makes perfect sense.

The de Menils spent several decades collecting “things in which we believe,” as John phrased it, to develop one of the world’s most inspired art collections. Luckily for Houston, the majority of their art is housed here in The Menil Collection, but the de Menils also were extraordinarily generous in donating artworks to museums elsewhere. That process of collection and dissemina-tion is traced admirably by “A Modern Patronage: de Menil Gifts to American and European Museums” (The Menil Collection/Yale University Press, 2007), by Marcia Brennan, associ-ate professor of art history at Rice; Alfred Pacquement, director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris; and Ann Temkin, the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Paintings and Sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The book showcases some 50 works from such diverse artists as Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol and Christo, among others, as well as numerous pieces from the de Menils’ outstanding African, Oceanic and pre-Columbian collections. Many are reproduced in large-format, full-color images that are interspersed with engaging text that describes how the de Menils built their collection and then gave it to the world.

—Christopher Dow

Many are repro-duced in large-format, full-color images that are interspersed with engaging text that describes how the de Menils built their collec-tion and then gave it to the world.


Desert Light and Distance“There’s nothing out there,” my friend said, referring to the great arid reaches of the American West and Southwest. I couldn’t have disagreed more. There’s time and distance and the contours of the Earth that show an incredible vari-ety to the discerning eye. And over it all, there is an almost mesmerizing interplay of shadows and light.

If Catharine Hill Savage Brosman’s new volume of poetry, “Range of Light” (Louisiana State University Press, 2007), is any indication, she would agree wholeheartedly with me.

Brosman ’55, a professor emeritus of French at Tulane University who has produced a number of outstanding academic works in her fi eld, has been equally prolifi c in writing poetry and essays about her travels, particularly through the regions of America where the environment seems to dominate the people who live there.

The full-bodied poems in “Range of Light” vividly and grace-fully capture a physical landscape that is humanized by signs of pres-ent and past habitation. If those signs often show the imperma-nence and frailty of humankind, they also show its diversity as well as its tenacity. Most of all, the poems evoke contemplations of

eternity and meaning that seem to be crucial elements in sur-viving and making sense of such long distances, vast spaces and inhospitable conditions.

For those of us who already love the American West and Southwest, “Range of Light” will be a fond return. For others, it might provide an illuminating experience.

—Christopher Dow

might provide an illuminating experience.

—Christopher Dow

The full-bodied poems in “Range of Light” vividly and gracefully capture a physical landscape that is humanized by signs of present and past habitation.


Bookshelf

An American Ambassador in the Middle EastTo navigate the complexities of any envi-ronment, you need a good guidebook. When it comes to a region like the Middle East, however, the socio-political landscape is arguably more convoluted than the geo-graphic terrain, so it’s critical to get solid information from someone who knows the territory. That’s what makes Edward P. Djerejian’s new book, “Danger and Opportunity: An American Ambassador’s Journey Through the Middle East,” such a valuable contribution to the literature on international relations.

Djerejian, founding director of Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, wrote the book to encapsulate his experiences as an American diplomat who served under eight United States presidents and administrations, from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton. William Martin, the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Senior Fellow for Religion and Public Policy at the Baker Institute and professor emeritus of sociolo-gy, collaborated with Djerejian on the book.

The book begins with an open letter to the next president of the United States. Djerejian, who served as U.S. ambassador to both Syria and Israel as well as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, calls for immediate involvement in efforts to stabilize the region. Furthermore, he urges the incoming administration to engage its adversaries. Finally, he backs a fundamental

shift in U.S. foreign policy in the region from confl ict management to confl ict resolution.

Discussing the book at a Baker Institute event, Djerejian said that the overarching goal of U.S. foreign policy in the Arab and Muslim world should be to strengthen moderates and marginalize extremists. The best way to achieve that, he said, is to avoid imposing solutions from the outside and to adopt policies that promote solutions that stem mainly from the people in the region. But we also must be aware of unintended consequences.

“We should not be so naïve in Washington,” Djerejian said, “to think that we can promote democracy in the Middle East without Islamist groups coming into power.”

While supporting moves to spread democracy in the Arab and Muslim world, Djerejian cautioned against a “fi xation on elections.” He relayed an anecdote from his time as ambassador in Damascus. Then-Syrian President Hafez al-Assad had just been re-elected with 99.44 percent of the vote. Djerejian said he congratulated Assad on his overwhelming victory and then asked about the .56 percent that had voted against him. “I have all their names,” Assad assured Djerejian. The point, Djerejian said, is that “elections alone do not make democracy.”

“Danger and Opportunity” includes chapters on Djerejian’s time in Beirut, Damascus and Jerusalem, as well as on the geopolitics of energy and on his roles as senior adviser to the Iraq Study Group and chairman of the bipartisan U.S. Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World. It is aimed at audiences ranging from historians to policy analysts to casual readers.

—Franz Brotzen

“California Romantica: Spanish Colonial and Mission-Style Houses,”photos by Paul Hester ’71, lecturer in visual and dramatic arts at Rice, and Lisa Hardaway; created by Diane Keaton, text by D. J. Waldie (Rizzoli, 2007)

“Financial Reporting and Global Capital Markets: A History of the International Accounting Standards Committee, 1973–2000,” by Stephen A. Zeff, the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Accounting, and Kees Camfferman (Oxford University Press, 2007)

“Interfacial Phenomena: Equilibrium and Dynamic Effects,” by Clarence A. Miller, Louis Calder Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and P. Neogi (CRC Press, 2007)

“The Legend of Mar Qardagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq,”by Joel Walker ’91 (University of California Press, 2006)

“Lord of the Loincloth,”by Christopher Dow, Rice staff (Phosphene Publishing Co., 2007)

“We should not be so naïve in Washington to think that we can promote democracy in the Middle East without Islamist groups coming into power.”

—Edward P. Djerejian


Bowl ’EmBowl ’EmOver

Sports

Dec. 30, 2008, was a day Rice football fans will remember well. In a near-perfect performance in Reliant Stadium, the Owls defeated the Western Michigan University Broncos 38–14 and ended more than 50 years of postsea-son frustration by winning their fi rst bowl game since the 1954 Cotton Bowl.



The season also marked the fi rst time Rice reached 10 victories since 1949, and the players hope they’ve set a higher standard for the future.“When you look back and see how everything has unfolded, it’s a special op-portunity,” said quarterback Chase Clement. “It really sets this program in the right direction. Hopefully, those guys who are younger than us have seen what it takes to win and what it takes to be successful and keep that going.”

The victory hinged on Clement, who threw three touchdown passes, ran for a score and caught a touchdown pass from wide receiver Jarett Dillard. Clement went 30-for-44 for 307 yards and was the game’s Most Valuable Player. Dillard caught his nation-leading 20th touchdown of the season and fi nished his Rice career with 60 career TD catches — an NCAA record by 10. He also tied former Memphis running back DeAngelo Williams’ Conference USA record for career touchdowns.

Usually, the passing goes from Clement to Dillard, but in a dramatic role reversal, Clement passed to Dillard, who threw back to a wide-open Clement for a touchdown and a 31–0 lead. It was Dillard’s fi rst career completion and the 51st touchdown produced by the duo. Then, Dillard caught an 18-yard pass from Clement in the fourth quarter to give Rice a 38–0 lead. In eight previous bowls, the Owls never scored more than 28 points.

“I was just surprised at how well we were executing,” Dillard said. “It was a team effort, and we really stepped out on the fi eld and played as one.”

The performance by Rice’s defense was just as remarkable. Although the Owls gave up an average of 467 yards and 35 points per game during the season, they shut out the high-scoring Broncos — who ranked 24th in total offense coming in — for more than three quarters before Bronco quarter-back Tim Hiller threw a 2-yard touchdown pass to Kirk Elsworth with 6:33 left in the game.

The Rice win was the result of a sea-son’s worth of discipline and teamwork.

“We just needed time to grow,” said linebacker Brian Raines. “We had the chance to work and have some chemistry going into this game.”

For more coverage and photos of the game, visit:

››› tinyurl.com/8m6qdt

Sports

After a season for both the record books and the storybooks, Rice Head Football Coach David Bailiff has been named the Conference USA (C-USA) Coach of the Year. But Bailiff isn’t taking it personally.

“Coach of the Year is a tribute to this whole football team,” Bailiff said. “It lets you know how hard the players have worked and how much everyone has given — from the assistant coaches to the Athletics Department to the staff that keeps our build-ing in shape. It might be my name on it, but it represents Rice and Rice Athletics.”

This year, Bailiff led the Owls to a 7–1 conference record, a share of the West Division title, a 9–3 overall record and a win in the Texas Bowl against Western Michigan University.

“With the Texas Bowl and Rice’s winning season, you can feel a sense of pride on campus and in Houston,” Bailiff said. “It gives others exposure to this great university.”

Bailiff’s 2008 Rice squad set more than 30 school, conference and NCAA team and individual records. The Owls’ offense ranked 10th in the Football Bowl Subdivision in total offense, fi fth in passing offense and eighth in scoring offense.

“You break records when you don’t worry about records,” Bailiff said. “You break them when you’re not concerned about yourself. You’re doing it for your team.”

Players’ Honors

Under Bailiff’s guidance, fi ve Rice players earned All-Conference USA recognition by the league’s coaches, including three fi rst-team selections. Included are quar-terback Chase Clement and wide receiver Jarett Dillard, who became the NCAA’s most prolifi c scoring duo. Dillard, Rice’s record-setting receiver, has been named to the Football Writers Association of America All-American team, the fi rst Owl to earn the honor since Buddy Dial received it in 1959. Clement, the team’s standout quarterback, was recognized as the C-USA Most Valuable Player. Both expect to be chosen in next year’s National Football League draft. Additionally, four Rice players earned ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District recognition this fall, with sopho-more tight end James Casey being named an Academic All-American.

“If you ask Chase how he did it, he’ll credit the offensive line,” Bailiff said. “If you ask Casey, he will give praise to Dillard. It’s the whole football team that contributes, and I’m so proud of them. It’s nice when good guys work hard and get rewarded.”

Bailiff’s players aren’t strangers to rewards — or hard work. Since taking the reigns in 2007, Bailiff has demanded focus and dedication from his players on and off the fi eld. When he fi rst arrived at Rice, he didn’t have the players’ names put on the backs of their jerseys.

He told them, “If you want your names on the backs of these jerseys, you will have to earn them.” At the time, he was thinking that his players would earn them on the gridiron. But when his players achieved the program’s highest ever cumula-tive GPA, he had the names added.

“That was an accomplishment that had to be signifi cantly marked and hon-ored,” Bailiff said. “Being a student–athlete is not just about winning, it’s about be-ing involved in the community. It’s about graduating. It’s one thing I like most about Rice. Academics are valued, and student–athletes are expected to be students.”

They’re also gentlemen.“When you leave a hotel and the staff says what a class act your guys are, that

means something,” Bailiff said. “People always stop to tell me that they’ve never seen such character in football players.”

Bailiff said he saw that character when he took the job at Rice. He also be-lieved that the Owls could be a winning team athletically as well as academically.

A Texas Treasure

“Growing up in this state, I always thought Rice was a Texas treasure. But it’s not just a Texas treasure. This is a school that is known from coast to coast as one of the best. I just hope it will soon be known as one of the best for athletics, too.”

To ensure that the football program continues down that successful path, Bailiff and his staff are working hard to recruit top talent who also will fi t in at Rice.

“Our players are smart. They can look 50 years into the future and see what that Rice degree can do for them — they’re not just thinking about the next four or fi ve years on the fi eld,” Bailiff said. “We tell every recruit that fi ve years after graduation, we expect him to be the boss. In 10 years, we expect him to have paid back his scholarship. And in 40 or 50 years, he should have a building named for him.”

While Bailiff’s players strive for those goals, he strives for another one.“I hope they leave with a love for Rice and a love for each other,” he said. “I

hope they always stay involved and that they will rely on each other in the good times and the bad, just like they’ve done on the fi eld.”

—Jessica Stark

Coach of the Year

“With the Texas Bowl and Rice’s winning season, you can feel a sense of pride on campus and in Houston. It gives others exposure to this great university.”

—David Bailiff



Rice prides itself on the better-than-passing grade point averages of its student–athletes, but quar-terback Chase Clement and wide receiver Jarett Dillard also have made the grade with better-than-average passing points for their record-breaking achievements in pass–reception.

Clement and Dillard came to Rice as unheralded recruits from San Antonio, Texas, their prosaic high school football careers holding no hint that they’d eventually become the most productive duo in NCAA history. But the proof came on Sept. 26, 2008, when the two seniors established an NCAA record of 41 career scoring passes as Rice blasted North Texas 77–20. They knocked down the former record of 38 established in 1997–98 by Tim Rattay and Troy Edwards of Louisiana Tech University and matched last season by Colt Brennan and Davone Bess of the University of Hawaii at Mãnoa.

The game also allowed Dillard to tie Edwards for the NCAA career record for touchdown recep-tions, with 50, and Rice’s score set a Conference USA record and was the highest point total by an Owls’ team in the modern era and Rice’s largest margin of victory since 1944. The only Owls foot-ball team to score more points in a game was the 1916 unit, which defeated Southern Methodist University 146–3.

But Rice’s dynamic duo wasn’t fi nished. By the time the season and the Texas Bowl were history, they’d chalked up a total of 52 successful pass receptions. Technically, the next-to-the-last instance in the Texas Bowl was a case of role reversal, with Dillard throwing to Clement for a touchdown. With one last shot from Clement, Dillard wound up his career with 60 touchdown catches, besting the former record by 10.

For their outstanding efforts, Clement and Dillard have received a number of honors, both individually and as a pair, including being named San Antonio Sportsmen of the Year.

View Chase Clement’s stats at:››› t inyurl .com / 8qfman

View Jarett Dillard’s stats at:››› t inyurl .com / 77 2 sn5

Read a Q&A with Chase Clement and Jarett Dillard:››› t inyurl .com / 9r 6 3 3o


DynamicDynamicDuo

BookshelfO N T H E

To learn more about this fund or about making charitable gifts to Rice through your estate, please contact the Offi ce of Gift Planning for gift illustrations and calculations tailored to your situation.

Phone: 713-348-4624 • E-mail: [email protected] • Web site: www.giving.rice.edu/giftplanning

Dr. Teresa J. Vietti ’49 has never been one to shy away from a challenge. As an undergraduate student at Rice during the 1940s, she was one of only a handful of female students enrolled. She also began studying and treating cancer in children before the fi eld of pediatric oncology even existed.

Educational achievement and a pioneering spirit seem to be part of the Vietti family genes. Dr. Vietti’s father held a Ph.D. in physical chemistry and was a successful exploratory geophysi-cist, while her mother, Grace, earned a degree in art history at a time when even fewer women pursued postsecondary studies.

Now, through several planned gifts, Dr. Vietti will honor her mother’s passion for art by estab-lishing the Grace Vietti Endowed Chair in Visual Arts. Her gift not only will help to secure an important faculty position in the humanities, but also will benefi t Rice students for years to come.

Medical Pioneer Honors Mother’s Passion for Art

Dr. Teresa J. Vietti

Nonprofit OrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDPermit #7549

Houston, Texas

Rice UniversityCreative Services–MS 95P.O. Box 1892Houston, TX 77251-1892

T H E C E N T E N N I A L C A M P A I G N

Fun, food and enthusiasm abounded at Centennial

Campaign kick-off events held in New York and

San Francisco and on the Rice campus.

Visit the photo gallery ››› t inyurl .com / 8 z 3nz z

Rice Magazine 2

Education

Transcript of Rice Magazine 2