Rice University is a private, independent university dedicated to providing unsurpassed undergraduate education and producing internationally distinguished scholarship in carefully focused areas of research. Rice is a top-ranked university with a small student/faculty ratio and the third largest endowment per student in the country.
Rice’s greatest research strength is its ability to create truly interdisciplinary teams of scientists and engineers to address the complex challenges facing society today. Multidisciplinary teams are a natural outgrowth of Rice’s small size, collaborative atmosphere, and lack of barriers between departments and schools within the university. These research teams tackle today’s tough problems by combining their expertise in theory, experimentation, and computation. Rice has established four engineering and science institutes to facilitate interdisciplinary research in the key thrust areas described below. They are the Rice Quantum Institute (Nano), the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering (Bio), the Computer and Information Technology Institute (Info), and the Energy and Environmental Systems Institute (Enviro). All faculty are free to associate with and participate in one or more of these institutes, independent of departmental or school boundaries.
Nanoscale Science & Technology
Research is already published on engineering nanoscale structures to inhibit HIBV reproduction. Other engineered molecules can provide scaffolding to assist the body in rebuilding damaged cells and tissues. Novel gene therapy research, molecular repair of chromosomes with nanoscale agents, is underway.
Research at Rice in the areas of materials science, chemical processes, and electronics promises strong, lightweight nanostructures that will enable an entire new class of materials. These materials will be used to produce lighter and safer airplanes, autos, construction materials, and power lines. Researchers are studying the conductivity of nanoscale carbon structures for breakthroughs in electronic circuitry for faster, smaller electronic devices and efficient ways of harnessing energy.
Biosciences and Bioengineering
Computational biology, bioinformatics, and biostatistics bring Rice engineering and sciences faculty together to develop novel methods, analyses, algorithms, and approaches to the study of modern biosciences. Supported by NLM and NIH, training programs that involve Rice and other Gulf Coast institutions target the interface between computational and biological sciences to develop expertise that crosses these boundaries and creates opportunities. For example, the development of methods by computer scientists and applied mathematicians has greatly expanded our ability to achieve high-resolution images from electron microscopy analyses. This will be particularly useful in understanding virus structure and subcellular organelles.
Rice is a NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training, or NSCORT, and its bioengineering program is studying the effects of gravity on molecular mechanisms of cell and tissue functions. It is also a member of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) for space biomedical research.
Computational Science & Engineering/Information Technology
Rice University is a national leader in computer simulation and modeling of challenging engineering and science problems. From computational fluid dynamics, computational chemistry and physics, and computational biology, to computational finance and energy market forecasting, Rice faculty have a solid record in computational sciences and engineering. With a history of success in these fields, Rice researchers address real-world problems through long-established collaborations with partners in both industry (Texas Instruments, Nokia, Schlumberger and Compaq) and government (National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, NASA and the U.S. Army).
Rice University is a major recipient of NSF funding for digital signal processing (DSP) and wireless communication. Thirty years ago, researchers at Rice helped to establish the field of DSP, which is at the heart of today’s wireless communication technology, and today Rice retains its dominant role in the evolution of the field. Rice researchers are now developing next-generation technology for a truly seamless voice/video network that allows user movement between wireless networks without service interruption. Rice derives extensive industry support for its labs, not only to enable the technology breakthroughs needed to propel growth in the wireless industry, but also to better educate the next generation of professionals the industry needs.
Energy and Environmental Science and Engineering
Research in each of these areas includes fundamental analysis of the interplay between physical, chemical, and biological components of the environment and the development of appropriate technologies to enable sustained improvements in the human condition while protecting environmental quality. Research groups at Rice are focused on applications of nano-structured materials to create advanced membrane separations for use in water purification membranes for fuel cells and new generation catalysts, the development of environmental information technologies to provide real-time prediction of natural hazards and environmental quality, and the use of environmental biotechnologies where advances in bioscience and bioengineering can be harnessed to sustain, remediate, and improve environmental quality.
For more information on these areas of research, see:
Nanoscale research focuses on the control and manipulation of materials with atomic precision to generate revolutionary breakthroughs in biomedical engineering, electronics, and medical and materials sciences. Research in this emerging area is coordinated by the Rice Quantum Institute, which includes the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, the Center for Carbon Nanotechnology, and the Center for Photonic Nanostructures. The Nobel Prize-winning discovery at Rice of buckminsterfullerene, a novel form of carbon, has provided the foundation for this important research area. That breakthrough also has catalyzed other high-impact discoveries in our laboratories and has made Rice a leader in nanoscale research. Fully one-fourth of Rice’s science and engineering faculty are engaged in nanoscale research. These researchers have made numerous theoretical breakthroughs and are developing applications such as nanoscale drug delivery devices that can carry medicines directly to afflicted areas preventing inadvertent damage to healthy cells. This pioneering research is creating sensors that enable instantaneous medical testing and innovative cancer therapies.
In the field of biosciences at Rice, new insights into complex regulatory systems and deeper understanding of biomolecular structure and function are enabling biochemists, working with industry researchers, to develop altered hemoglobins. These hemoglobins will serve as effective blood substitutes that have long shelf life and minimal side effects. Genetic methods are being used to engineer specific metabolic and signaling pathways, and genetic and biochemical studies explore the mechanisms by which plants respond to environmental signals and regulate their growth and behavior.
Rice’s fast-growing bioengineering program is ranked tenth in scholarly quality of its faculty and fourth in its teaching effectiveness by the National Research Council. Research is aimed at breakthroughs in cellular and tissue bioengineering and related areas of gene therapy, vascular implants, and orthopaedic regenerative medicine. A new national Center for Excellence in Cellular and Tissue Engineering focuses on the production of tissues, organs, and genetically altered cells for human implantation. For example, researchers are using synthetic biodegradable polymers as supportive scaffolds for cells and for bone regeneration, fabricating synthetic materials that mimic living cells and tissues, using injectable biodegradable hydrogels to repave and heal injured arteries, and developing gene therapy delivery systems using synthetic polymers.
Rice’s graduate program in software is ranked ninth in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. A particular strength is the effort in the Center for High Performance Software Research focused on software for high performance computer systems, an area in which Rice is a national leader. Rice’s landmark work on compiler optimization, computer memory hierarchies, and distributed computing has made high performance computing more usable and accessible to scientists and engineers throughout the nation. In its role as lead academic partner for the Los Alamos Computer Science Institute, Rice is helping make it possible for scientists to use the full potential of the most powerful scientific computers available today. At the same time, the NSF-sponsored Grid Application Development Software Project-a collaborative effort across eight universities led by Rice-is developing technologies that will make it possible to use the computing resources connected to the Internet to solve problems that cannot be addressed on any single supercomputer.
For the past three decades, Rice University has maintained a nationally recognized research focus in environmental science and engineering. Within this highly interdisciplinary field,researchers are investigating technological solutions to environmental concerns in urban areas and natural systems stemming from rapid population growth. Current research thrust areas include water resources and water purification, urban air quality, the transport and fate of pollutants in the environment the environmental impacts resulting from energy production and utilization, and the management of contaminated sediments in the Texas-Louisiana industrial corridor.
Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology
Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering
Computer and Information Technology Institute
Energy and Environmental Systems Institute