Engineering and Statistics

Pulickel Ajayan, Ph.D.
Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor of Engineering
Department Chair, Materials Science and Nanoengineering
Research areas:  development of functional nanostructured materials; nanomaterials in energy generation and storage; multifunctional composites; nano-enabled bio-mimetic systems and nanoelectronics, nanosensors and active nanosystems

Pedro Alvarez, Ph.D.
George R. Brown Professor of Engineering
Director, Nanosystems Engineering Research Center on Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT)
Research areas: environmental implications and applications of nanotechnology, bioremediation, fate and transport of toxic chemicals, water footprint of biofuels, water treatment and reuse, and antibiotic resistance control

Gang Bao, Ph.D.
Foyt Family Professor of Bioengineering
Research areas: nanomedicine, molecular imaging, genome editing

Lisa Biswal, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Research areas: chemical, biological, and engineering approaches to study soft materials such as colloids, polymers, lipids, and surfactants

Richard Baraniuk, Ph.D.
Victor E. Cameron Chair in Engineering
Director, OpenStax
Research areas: multiscale, computational signal and image processing; open access, collaborative scholarly publication

Daniel Cohan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research areas: photochemical modeling; atmospheric sensitivity analysis; pollutant impacts on human health and vegetation; environmental policy and management

Michael Diehl, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Bioengineering
Research areas: nanotechnology, protein engineering, advanced optics, and biophysics

Rebekah Drezek, Ph.D.
Professor of Bioengineering

Research areas: nanotechnology, optical molecular imaging, diagnostics, cancer

Katherine Ensor, Ph.D.
Noah G. Harding Professor of Statistics
Research areas: time series including categorical time series, spatial statistics, spatial-temporal methods, stochastic simulation, hierarchical modeling and information integration, stochastic process modeling and estimation. Application areas of financial modeling, risk management and environmental statistics.

Naomi Halas, Ph.D.
Stanley C. Moore Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Director, Smalley-Curl Institute
Research areas: design and fabrication of optically responsive nanostructures, nanophotonics, plasmonics

Ilya Hicks, Ph.D.
Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics
Research areas: combinatorial optimization, integer programming, graph theory and matroid theory. Some applications of interest are social networks, cancer treatment and network design.

Loren Hopkins, Ph.D.
Professor in the Practice, Statistics
Research areas: environmental statistics, human health risk assessment (including stochastic), air, soil and ground water pollution fate and transport

Joey Huchette, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics
Research areas: mathematical optimization, integer optimization, computational technology, particularly user-facing software tools for modeling and decision-making

Caleb Kemere, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Research areas: building interfaces with memory and cognitive processes; model-based signal processing; low-power embedded systems

Marek Kimmel, Ph.D.
Professor of Statistics

Research areas: p
opulation dynamics, branching processes, statistical genetics, molecular evolution, bioinformatics

Daniel Kowal, Ph.D.
Dobelman Family Assistant Professor of Statistics

Research areas: e
conomics, finance, neuroscience, biomedical engineering, and astronomy.

Meng Li, Ph.D.
Noah Harding Assistant Professor of Statistics
Research areas: probabilistic image analysis, multiscale modelling, network analysis, variable selection, functional data analysis, nonparametric Bayes, quantile regression, asymptotics, biomedical applications, machine learning, neuroscience

Qilin Li, Ph.D.
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research areas: advanced technologies for water and wastewater treatment, membrane processes, colloidal processes and interface phenomena in aqueous environments, environmental applications and implications of nanotechnology

Peter Lillehoj, Ph.D.
Shankle Chair in Mechanical Engineering, Associate Professor
Research areas: development and translation of microfluidic and BioMEMS technologies for broad applications in medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring and global health

Jun Lou, Ph.D.
Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering
Research areas: nanomaterial synthesis, nanomechanical characterization and nanodevice fabrication for energy, environment and biomedical applications

Kevin McHugh, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Bioengineering
Research areas: developing microdevices for controlled-release cancer immunotherapy; overcoming logical barriers to vaccination in the developing world using drug delivery strategies; engineering complex, self-organizing tissues for replacement and disease modeling.

Marie Lynn Miranda, Ph.D.
Professor of Statistics
Director, Children’s Environmental Health Initiative
Research areas: children’s environmental health, geospatial health informatics, impact of racial residential segregation on health

Maria Oden, Ph.D.
Director, Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen
Co-Director, Rice 360 Institute for Global Health
Teaching Professor of Bioengineering
Research areas: orthopedic biomechanics and computational modeling

Marcia O’Malley, Ph.D.
Stanley C. Moore Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Advisor to the Provost, Rice ENRICH
Research areas: design, modeling, and control of electromechanical devices and systems; design and control of haptic interfaces and bilateral telemanipulation systems; development of human-machine interfaces for human-assisted movement and the modeling of human-robot interactions

Matteo Pasquali, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Research areas: interaction of flow and liquid micro- and nano-structure

Alberto Pimpinelli, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Smalley-Curl Institute
Research areas: nanoscience, physics, materials

Daniel Preston, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Research areas: interdisciplinary research at the intersection of energy, materials, and fluids

Rebecca Richards Kortum, Ph.D.
Malcolm Gillis University Professor
Professor of Bioengineering
Director, Rice 360 Institute for Global Health
Research areas: development of low-cost, high-performance technologies for remote and low-resource settings; life-saving health technologies that address disease and conditions such as cervical and oral cancer, premature birth, sickle cell disease, and malaria

Robert Raphael, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Bioengineering
Research areas: auditory system, cochlear biophysics, membrane and cell mechanics, mathematical modeling of biological systems, confocal and multiphoton microscopy

Jacob Robinson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Research areas: nanotechnology to measure and manipulate neural activity

Ashutosh Sabharwal, Ph.D.
Chair and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Research areas: w
ireless networks, information theory, multiple antenna systems, coding and computation

Andrew Schaefer, Ph.D.
Noah Harding Chair and Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics
Research areas: operations research and industrial engineering, including mixed-integer programming, stochastic optimization and large-scale optimization

Laura Segatori, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Research areas: relationship between protein folding and disease, the molecular determinants of cellular protein folding, and on the development of cell protein engineering strategies to manipulate the chaperone and degradation capacity

Lauren Stadler, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research areas: advancing water reuse and energy recovery from wastewater using a multi-disciplinary approach that combines microbial ecology, environmental chemistry, and sustainability assessment

Jerzy Szablowski, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Bioengineering
Research areas: drugs and gene delivery; molecular engineering, synthetic biology, systems neuroscience, translational research on brain disorders

Jeffrey Tabor, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Bioengineering
Research areas: synthetic biology, optogenetics, bacterial two component systems, synthetic probiotics, therapeutic bacteria, diagnostic bacteria

Omid Veiseh, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Bioengineering
Research areas: advanced nano, micro, and macro fabrication techniques in combination with molecular engineering and cellular and molecular biology, to develop platforms of implantable devices tailored for in vivo chemical sensing and delivery of therapeutics

Ashok Veeraraghavan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Research areas: c
omputational imaging, compressive sensing for imaging, signal processing and computer vision

Rafael Verduzco, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
Research areas: polymers, including commercial products as well as proteins and biological materials; polymeric materials, in particular block copolymers, for a wide range of applications, including organic solar cells, engineering surface properties, and drug encapsulation and delivery

Matthew Wettergreen, Ph.D.
Associate Teaching Professor, Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen
Research areas: prototype physical solutions using low fidelity prototyping, iterative design, advanced manufacturing

Michael Wong, Ph.D.
Chair and William M. McCardell Professor in Chemical Engineering
Research areas: materials chemistry, with a particular interest in energy and environmental applications ("catalysis for clean water") and an emphasis on understanding synthesis-structure-property relationships in heterogeneous catalysis

Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering
Seeks to promote interdisciplinary research and education, foster ties with the Texas Medical Center, create partnerships with industry, promote the translation of research, and facilitate strong research and training programs.

Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen
Provides a space for undergraduate students majoring in bioengineering, chemical and biomolecular engineering, civil and environmental engineering, computational and applied mathematics, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, materials science and nanoengineering, mechanical engineering and statistics to design, prototype and deploy solutions to real-world engineering challenges.

Rice ENRICH (Educational and Research Initiatives for Collaborative Health)
Responsible for advising the Provost about opportunities to strengthen research and educational collaboration between Rice and other members of the Texas Medical Center (TMC).

Shared Equipment Authority
Supports and provides state-of-the-art research equipment capabilities for Rice University and the extended Rice community.

Smalley-Curl Institute
Multidisciplinary research institute encompassing advanced materials, quantum magnetism, plasmonics and photonics, biophysics and bioengineering, ultracold atom physics, condensed matter and chemical physics, and all aspects of nanoscience and nanotechnology.