The spring 2024 issue of Rice Engineering Magazine is here!
At Rice Engineering, we are driven by a passion for innovation and a commitment to responsible engineering practices. It’s with great excitement that we unveil the new design of Rice Engineering magazine, which underscores our dedication to excellence in research, education, and service. The 2023-24 issue is full of news about how Rice Engineering is solving for greater good.
New Faculty
Rice Engineering is growing with the hiring of 17 tenure-track and four teaching faculty members. Spanning all nine departments, the new hires further establish the school’s prominence in its key research areas: health and well-being, energy and sustainability, resilient and adaptive communities, advanced materials, and future computing.
 Michael King
E.D. Butcher Chair of Bioengineering, CPRIT Scholar Michael King is currently the J. Lawrence Wilson Professor of Engineering and Department Chair of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Biomedical Engineering Society and the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering. His lab studies cancer metastasis and mechanotransduction. He will join the Rice faculty on July 1, 2024. |
 Lane Martin
Welch Professor of Materials Science & NanoEngineering, Director of the Rice Advanced Materials Institute Lane Martin earned his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2008. Previously, he was a faculty member in Berkeley and a Chancellor’s Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. He has published more than 275 journal articles and is a fellow of American Physical Society and the American Ceramics Society. |
 Cynthia Reinghart-King
John W. Cox Chair of Bioengineering Cynthia Reinhart-King is a University Distinguished Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Research at Vanderbilt University in Biomedical Engineering and Cell and Developmental Biology. She serves as president of the Biomedical Engineering Society and is a fellow of BMES, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanisms that drive tissue formation and tissue disruption in such diseases as cancer and atherosclerosis. She will join the Rice faculty on July 1, 2024. |
 Jason Adams
Assistant professor, chemical and biomolecular engineering Jason Adams earned his Ph.D. in ChBE from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2022 and has since served as a postdoctoral research associate at the California Institute of Technology. His research interests include catalysis for the decarbonization and electrification of chemical manufacturing and wastewater treatment. He will join the Rice faculty on Jan. 1, 2025. |
 Maryam Aliakbarpour
Michael B. Yuen and Sandra A. Tsai Assistant Professor of Computer Science Maryam Aliakbarpour earned her Ph.D. in CS from MIT in 2020 and has since worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Boston University, Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research focuses on theoretical computer science, statistical inference, learning theory, differential privacy and hypothesis testing.
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 Thomas Geoffrey Anderson
Assistant Professor, Computational Applied Mathematics and Operations Research Thomas Geoffrey Anderson received his Ph.D. in applied and computational mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 2020. Since then, he has worked as a mathematics postdoctoral scholar at the University of Michigan. Anderson’s research interests include numerical analysis, spectral methods, scientific computing, and numerical methods for PDEs. |
 Raudel Avila Raudel Avila earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 2023 from Northwestern University. His research combines mechanics, materials and electromagnetic concepts to engineer bioelectronics for health care and biomedical applications. |
 Jessica Butts
Assistant professor, bioengineering Jessica Butts earned her Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of California, San Francisco, in 2018. She then served as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Postdoctoral Associate in Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine. She researches neuronal fate decisions in the developing hindbrain. |
 Hanjie Chen
Assistant professor, computer science
Hanjie Chen earned her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Virginia in 2023, where she worked as a research assistant in the Information and Language Processing Lab. Her research interests include trustworthy AI, natural language processing and interpretable machine learning. She will join the Rice faculty on July 1, 2024. |
 Avantika Gori
Assistant professor, civil and environmental engineering
Avantika Gori earned her Ph.D. in civil engineering in 2023 from Princeton, and her B.S. and M.S. in civil engineering from Rice in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Her research focuses on quantifying coastal flood hazards under present and future climate and development conditions. |
 Stavroula (Alina) Kampouri
Assistant professor, chemical and biomolecular engineering
Stavroula Kampouri earned her Ph.D. in chemistry and chemical engineering in 2020 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. Since then, she has worked as a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry at MIT. Her research interests include porous, functional materials (e.g., metal-organic frameworks) and applications in semiconductor technologies. |
 Scott Keene
Assistant professor, materials science and nanoengineering
Scott Keene earned his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Stanford in 2020 and spent the next two years as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Cambridge University. His research interests include neuroelectronic interfaces, fundamentals of organic mixed ionic-electronic conductors, biosensors and organic neuromorphic devices. He will join the Rice faculty on July 1, 2024. |
 HaeYeon Lee,
Assistant professor, materials science and nanoengineering
HaeYeon Lee earned her Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from MIT in 2021 and since then has worked as a postdoctoral research scientist in the Columbia Nano Initiative at Columbia University. Her research interests include understanding fundamental electronic properties of quantum materials (mainly, van der Waals materials) and developing optoelectronic devices. |
 Hengrui Luo
Assistant professor, statistics
Hengrui Luo earned his Ph.D. in statistics from Ohio State University in 2020, and worked as a postdoctoral fellow in applied mathematics and computational research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. His research focuses on Bayesian methodology, topological and geometrical data analysis, and high-dimensional probability. |
 Vanessa Sanchez
Assistant professor, mechanical engineering
Vanessa Sanchez earned her Ph.D. in materials science and mechanical engineering from Harvard in 2022 and now serves as a postdoctoral fellow in chemical engineering at Stanford University. Her research group will work on responsive textiles for assistive wearables spanning from the molecular to the structural and device levels. She will join the Rice faculty on July 1, 2024. |
 Juliane Sempionatto
Assistant professor, electrical and computer engineering
Juliane Sempionatto earned her Ph.D. in nanoengineering from the University of California, San Diego, in 2021, and served as a postdoctoral researcher in medical engineering at the California Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on development of wearable sensors, including electrochemical biosensors for monitoring analytes in sweat, saliva, tears and interstitial fluid. |
 Lu Zhang
Assistant professor, computational applied mathematics and operations research
Lu Zhang earned her Ph.D. in computational and applied mathematics from Southern Methodist University in 2020, then worked as a term assistant professor of applied mathematics at Columbia University. Her research interests include numerical analysis (discontinuous Galerkin, finite difference), data-driven computational inversion (imaging, fast algorithms, deep learning), and mathematical biology (chemotaxis, population dynamics, pattern formation). |
 Sinan Kockara
Lecturer, computer science
Sinan Kockara earned his computer engineering degree from Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey, in 2001 and his Ph.D. in applied computing from the University of Arkansas in 2008, where he was a tenured full professor in computer science and engineering. His research focuses on medical image processing, especially in dermatology, and VR surgical simulation development for orthopedics training. |
 Luis Fernando Guzman Nateras
Lecturer, computer science
Luis Fernando Guzman Nateras earned his Ph.D. in CS in 2023 from the University of Oregon. He served for nine years as a CS lecturer at the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolas de Hidalgo in Mexico, where he also worked as a software developer. His research interests include the intersection of cross-lingual learning and information extraction. |
 Andrew Womack
Lecturer, statistics
Andrew Womack earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from Washington University in 2011 and served as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida and the University of Southern California. From 2014 to 2022 he was an assistant professor of STAT at Indiana University. Working as a consulting statistician, Womack’s most recent research has been on aphasia modeling in stroke patients. |
 Ricardo Zednik
Professor in the practice, materials science and nanoengineering
Ricardo Zednik earned his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Stanford in 2008, and since 2014 has served as a professor of mechanical engineering in the École de Technologie Supérieure at the Université du Québec. His research focuses on the relationships between structure, geometry and properties of functional materials. |