NSM Pride: Awards and Honors

Share News of Your Achievements

NSM is proud of the achievements of our outstanding alumni, students, staff and faculty. Submit news of your awards, new jobs and honors to uhnsm@uh.edu or contact Kathy Major at ksmajor@uh.edu or 713-743-4023.

Alumni

Azie Aziz (Ph.D. ’16, Geophysis) spoke at the Asia Society of Texas’s 2023 Young Leaders Institute: Equality and Human Development. She addressed how access to quality education can change one’s life. Aziz, who works as a Patent Agent for Womble Bond Dickinson (US) LLP, also volunteers as an EMERGE mentor. The EMERGE program connects high school seniors with Houston-area professionals from across all types of industries and different personal backgrounds. The goal of the program is for students to develop unique and lifelong relations with mentors who support their personal growth and expose them to life-changing opportunities. Aziz leads Womble Bond Dickinson’s participation in ADAPT (Advancing Diversity Across Patent Teams), an industry-wide effort to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion within the intellectual property profession. She also organizes the Art & Diversity Program at Womble Bond Dickinson, a support platform for emerging and mid-career diverse artists in the Houston area to exhibit their work at her firm.

Jennifer “Jen” Campo (’08, Chemistry; ’12, Geology; M.S. ’14, Geology) is serving on the NSM Dean’s Advisory Board. Campo began her career with the Landmark Software Product Service Line at Halliburton. She is currently an adjunct geology professor at Lone Star College University Park where she serves as lead Physical Geology professor.

Joseph “Joe” Melenric (’83, Mathematics; M.A. ’08, History) is serving on the NSM Dean’s Advisory Board. He retired from a 39-year career at NASA Johnson Space Center as a senior aerospace manager working for NASA contractors, including United Space Alliance, Lockheed-Martin, Leidos and KBR. He managed flight controllers, engineers, and hardware and software professionals at NASA’s Mission Control Center, Sonny Carter Training Facility, and Space Vehicle Mockup Facility supporting the Space Shuttle, International Space Station, and Artemis programs.

Thao Tran (Ph.D. ’15, Chemistry) received a prestigious Beckman Young Investigator Award from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. She is one of 11 recipients selected in 2023 from a field of nearly 200 applicants. The award offers $600,000 in funding over four years. Awardees exemplify the Foundation’s mission of supporting the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences, particularly to foster the invention of methods, instruments, and materials that will open new avenues of research in science. Tran is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at Clemson University. Her research team is interested in solving fundamental challenges in materials chemistry directly relevant to current energy and information technology research. The award will enable the Tran Group to further explore chemistry for quantum technologies. Prior to joining the faculty at Clemson, she was a postdoctoral research associate at Johns Hopkins University’s Institute of Quantum Matter. Her UH mentor was Shiv Halasyamani.

Students and Postdoctoral Fellows

Sharmila Appini (Geophysics Ph.D. student) received a Student Presentation Award for her oral presentation titled “Influence of a Dipping Anisotropic Slab on Shear Wave Splitting in Japan.” Appini gave the presentation at the 2023 Seismological Society of America (SSA) Annual Meeting held in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As a Student Presentation Award recipient, Appini received a complimentary membership to SSA for 2024. Her Ph.D. is supervised by Yingcai Zheng (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences).

Annual NSM Three-Minute Thesis Competition Winners

Eight graduate students representing all six departments presented their research efforts at the “Hot Topics in NSM” event. Participants must present their research in three minutes or less using a single static graphic. A panel consisting of a graduate student from each department served as the judges.

First Place: Abhinav Bagchi (Biology & Biochemistry Ph.D. student), “Regulation of Liver X Receptor b (LXRb) Protein Stability in Pancreatic Cancer Cells.” Advisor: Chin-Yo Lin
Second Place: Clayton Donald (Chemistry Ph.D. student), “Methods to Mimic Nature.” Advisor: Jeremy May

“Most Popular” Awards (chosen by audience)

First Place: Aranya Giri (Physics Ph.D. student), “Understanding the Building Block of Matter.” Advisor: Rene Bellwied
Second Place: Felix Minta (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Ph.D. student), “Earth-Facing Coronal Mass Ejections Transit Times Estimate Using Artificial Neural Network.” Advisor: Honghai Zhang

Dainis Boumber (Computer Science Postdoc), Fatima Z. Qachfar and Bryan Tuck (both Computer Science Ph.D. students) achieved first place in two areas of the worldwide ArAIEval Shared Task Competition at the First Arabic Natural Language Processing Conference. Their first-place rankings are in these tasks 1) Disinformation Detection in Arabic Social Media as a Binary Problem and 2) Arabic Social Media Disinformation Categorization into Multiple Classes. The student team was led by Rakesh Verma.

Otto Gadea (Geology Ph.D. student) and his advisor Shuhab Khan developed a more efficient way to detect the formation of critical minerals, also known as rare earth elements (REE), in rock formations. Their findings were published in IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters. With their new method, the relative amount of bastn̈asite and how it varies spatially across rock surfaces can be determined quickly and efficiently through a simple mathematical expression calculated from reflectance data in hyperspectral images from rocks. Bastn̈asite is a fluorocarbonate mineral that is rich in REEs, particularly cerium, lanthanum, neodymium and europium. These elements are essential for various electronics, magnets and components to power electric vehicles. Traditional methods of detecting REEs have proven to be time consuming and costly for companies, often requiring extensive drilling and laboratory analysis. Their method is adaptable to screen large regions using drones, airplanes and satellites.

Bailey Hodakievic (Geology major) has been appointed as the Student Councilor-at-Large for the American Institute of Professional Geologists-Texas Chapter Board. She is also serving as the President of the AIPG-Texas Statewide Student Chapter.

Hadi Zanganeh Kia (Atmospheric Sciences Ph.D. student) was first author on a paper with his mentor Yunsoo Choi and Delaney Nelson, Jincheol Park and Arman Pouyaei of UH EAS. The research, published in Science of The Total Environment, focused on understanding how the air moves outdoors and affects the spread of respiratory diseases like COVID-19. They simulated movement of a “sneeze plume” in areas where the air doesn’t circulate well, called “hot spots,” using a computer program that models the flow of air around buildings. They also used weather station data to mimic the wind patterns in 2019. With this information, they calculated how long it takes for fresh air to replace the existing air in these hot spots, looking at varying conditions such as upward, downward, and forward wind, and studying droplet behavior. The work highlights the importance of adequate ventilation and wind patterns in mitigating transmission of airborne particles.

Ali Raza (Geology Ph.D. student) participated in the Summer School on Speleothem Science at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. The conference attracts experts from around the world to share their knowledge and exchange ideas through lectures and workshops. It takes place every two years, each time in a different country. Speleothem science is the study of mineral deposits inside caves. Raza’s research focuses on developing a non-destructive way to study stalagmites by using high-resolution hyperspectral imaging. Stalagmites serve as excellent paleoclimate archives, preserving evidence of past changes in climate. His mentor is Ny Riavo “Voary” Voarintsoa.

Jason Ruszkowski (Physics major) participated in the Polar Aeronomy and Radio Science Summer School. The school culminated with experiments at the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) facility operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. Participants spent the first few days in classes and experiment design and then ran their experiments for several days at HAARP in Gakona, Alaska. Also participating were UH faculty members Edger Bering and Andrew Renshaw (Physics).

Larkin Spires (Geophysics Ph.D. student) is part of the inaugural cohort of UH-Chevron Energy Graduate Fellows. The program supports graduate students’ research efforts through a one-year, $12,000 fellowship which includes mentoring by faculty experts and the opportunity to engage with subject matter experts at Chevron. Eight UH students were selected. Her doctoral research involves a semi-empirical Brown and Korringa model for fluid substitution. Her faculty mentor is John Castagna. Spires, who is intrigued by the world of geophysics and its intricate ties to mathematics, has relevant industry experience in quantitative interpretation and post-processing of seismic data.

Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Student Research Grants Program

Three EAS students received funding through the department’s Student Research Grants Program. Now in its fifth semester, the program awards funds to students to carry out and publish research. Each semester, $5,000 is available, with up to $2,500 awarded per student. Fall 2023 winners included:

Arya Tilak, Understanding the Paleoclimatic Context of the Late Quaternary Extinction in the Rodrigues Island, Western Indian Ocean, $1,800
FNU Anshika, Development of an Analytical Method to Determine of Airborne Phthalates, $1,690
Nilay Gungor, Proglacial Delta-front Sediment Transport in West Greenland, $1,000

Uchenna Ubeh (Physics Ph.D. student) spent four months at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee participating in the first Neutron Scattering Graduate Research Program. He was supported by a graduate research fellowship funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. While at ORNL, he worked to further the research of magnetic materials and their properties. His UH mentor is Byron Freelon.

Alyson Vu (Biology major) received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Grant. Her assignment is in Lower Saxony, Germany.

Faculty/Staff

2023 Inspiring Programs in STEM Award

NSM’s teachHOUSTON Program received a 2023 Inspiring Programs in STEM Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, the largest and oldest diversity and inclusion publication in higher education. The Inspiring Programs in STEM Award honors colleges and universities that encourage and assist students from underrepresented groups to enter STEM fields. teachHOUSTON was recognized for its efforts to mentor and train a new generation of students in STEM teaching careers. The program was featured, along with 79 other recipients, in the September 2023 issue of INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine.

Faculty Honored with Named Professorships

Eric Bittner (Chemistry/Physics) - Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor
Xiao-Jia Chen (Physics) - M.D. Anderson Professor
P. Shiv Halasyamani (Chemistry) - Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Chair
Claudia Ratti (Physics) - M.D. Anderson Professor
Zhifeng Ren (Physics, TcSUH) - Paul C. W. Chu and May P. Chern Endowed Chair in Condensed Matter Physics

Sergio Alvarez and Jimmy Flynn (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) were part of a large international team of atmospheric scientists that found that when the Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha’apai volcano erupted last year, it took part of the ozone layer with it. The team published findings in the journal Science: “Rapid ozone depletion after humidification of the stratosphere by the Hunga Tonga Eruption.” The eruption was one of the more powerful explosions ever recorded. Also, instead of spewing just volcanic material, dirt and rocks, it also sent a very large amount of ocean water into the atmosphere. The team collected in situ data on water, aerosols, and ozone in the volcanic plume and combined them with remote sensing observations to show that all that saltwater reacting with other chemicals in the atmosphere, resulted in breaking down O₃ in the ozone layer. The UH team launched their SO₂ sonde to capture data from the volcanic plume.

Dinler Antunes (Biology & Biochemistry, CNRCS) has developed the CrossDome tool that helps predict the potential risks of T-cell-based immunotherapy. His work published in Frontiers in Immunology. CrossDome uses a combination of genetic and biochemical information to predict if T-cell immunotherapies might mistakenly attack healthy cells. To test the effectiveness of CrossDome, Antunes and Andre F. Fonseca, a former postdoctoral fellow in Antunes’ lab, used it to predict potential mistakes in 16 well-known cases of T-cell cross-reactivity, including a melanoma-heart damage case. The tool successfully identified the heart protein as a potential target for the T-cells, ranking it as a high-risk candidate among thousands of other proteins.

Kevin E. Bassler (Physics/TcSUH), Krešimir Josic (Mathematics) and Jiahao Guo (Physics/TcSUH) published in The Journal of Neuroscience with colleagues representing Creighton University, Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, and Carnegie Mellon University. The paper, “Hierarchical Modular Structure of the Drosophila Connectome,” was featured on the cover of the journal. The team applied novel community detection methods to analyze the synapse-level reconstruction of an adult female Drosophila melanogaster brain containing >20,000 neurons and 10 million synapses. Using a machine-learning algorithm, they found the most densely connected communities of neurons by maximizing a generalized modularity density measure. They resolved the community structure at a range of scales, from large (on the order of thousands of neurons) to small (on the order of tens of neurons). The team found that the network is organized hierarchically, and larger-scale communities are composed of smaller-scale structures. Their methods identify well-known features of the fly brain, including its sensory pathways.

Amanda Campos and Paige Evans (teachHOUSTON, Mathematics) gave presentations at the UTeach STEM Educators Conference in Austin and the AAAS 2023 Noyce Summit in Washington, D.C. The presentations centered on the teachHOUSTON induction program, which offers support for early-career STEM teachers through mentoring and enhanced induction that goes beyond the first year of teaching. The induction program aims to improve the retention of new teachers in the field, and the presentations provided guidelines to a national audience on best practices for achieving this goal.

John Castagna, John Suppe and Kurt W. Rudolph (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) have been selected as lecturers for the 2023–24 American Association of Petroleum Geologists Distinguished Lecture program. Only seven lecturers were chosen for 2023–24. Lecturers serve for a year and can be requested for in-person presentations. The lectures are also recorded as videos and can be streamed or downloaded from the AAPG website at any time. While EAS faculty have served as distinguished lecturers in previous years, having three in one year is a first for UH EAS!

Shuo Chen and Zhifeng Ren (Physics, TcSUH) were included in the 2023 Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers List. The annual list of Highly Cited Researchers includes global research and social scientists whose published academic papers rank in the top 1% of citations for field and publication year. Those making the list are recognized among the world’s elite researchers for the significant and broad influence of their scientific work.

Yunsoo Choi (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) and doctoral student Delaney Nelson published research using machine learning and innovative analysis techniques to pinpoint the city’s air pollution sources more accurately. Their findings are published in the journal Environmental Pollution. Their analysis revealed that in industrial areas, Houston’s oil and gas industry had the highest impact on emissions, while shortwave radiation and relative humidity were the two most important influencing factors for overall ozone concentration. The team worked with data from an industrial site near the Houston Ship Channel, one of the busiest seaports in the world, and a typical urban site surrounded by residences and businesses.

Yunsoo Choi (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) was corresponding author on a study highlighting the devastating effects wildfires can have on human health and the economies of communities hundreds of miles away from wildfires. The research paper, “Quantifying the Premature Mortality and Economic Loss From Wildfire-Induced PM2.5 in the Contiguous U.S.,” involving scientists from UH, Cornell University and Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology in China published in the journal Science of The Total Environment. The researchers used satellite wildfire emission and air quality (PM2.5) data gathered from 2012 to 2014 for their updated model and assessed how smoke from wildfires could impact human health and economies. Choi’s research group ran all the scenario-modeling simulations.

Greg Chu, David Stewart, and Stacy Smeal (NSM Office of Research) presented “Stranger Things in Proposal Budgets” at the National Council of University Research Administrators in Washington, D.C. Their co-presenter was from Texas A&M University.

Jacob Daane (Biology & Biochemistry) is leading a research project to uncover the genetic mechanisms that underlie trait evolution and disease resilience in fishes. The $1.9 million National Institute of General Medical Sciences grant spans five years and will delve into genomic and macroevolutionary trends that precede and follow the development of specific traits in fish species that thrive in the challenging environments. Many fish species have evolved traits that are highly adaptive in specific environments but would be considered pathological, or caused by disease, in humans. Daane’s laboratory seeks to know how the traits evolved and how the fishes overcame the detrimental effects of such phenotypic extremes. An interesting implication of this work is that it has the potential to inform our basic understanding of trait evolution. It also has the potential, years from now, to create treatments for humans suffering from a variety of diseases. The traits Daane’s team are studying – red blood cells, bone density, fat content and kidney function – have a connection to human disease.

Olafs Daugulis, Brad Carrow and Maurice Brookhart (Chemistry) are part of a UH research team receiving a $4 million Catalyst for Discovery Program Grant from The Welch Foundation. Megan Robertson of Cullen College of Engineering is the project lead. The research team includes additional members of the engineering faculty and aims to develop innovative chemical processes to transform plastic waste into useful materials. Members have a wide range of expertise in polymer synthesis, polymer physics and materials science. The chemists on the team will lead the development of unique polyolefins with new material properties and functions, while the chemical engineers will study their physical behavior and properties, such as strength and adhesion. This knowledge is crucial for creating new materials that can be recycled and reused more effectively.

Jacqueline Ekeoba (teachHOUSTON, Mathematics) received the Outstanding Master Teacher Award from the UTeach STEM Educators Association, a network of 50 universities preparing outstanding secondary STEM teachers across the country. It was presented at the annual UTeach STEM Educators Conference in Austin. She was recognized for her expertise in argumentation, global collaboration, STEM integration, and anti-racist education in secondary STEM contexts and her implementation of these practices in her teaching.

Paige Evans (teachHOUSTON, Mathematics) and the teachHOUSTON program received a $1 million grant to pilot expansion of a teacher residency program for degree holders. The program, called UTeach for Texas, provides a one-year pathway for participants to complete coursework and collaborate with an expert mentor teacher to observe and co-teach in a local K-12 school. The grant was awarded to the UTeach Institute from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. UTeach selected teachHOUSTON to run the expansion at UH.

Paige Evans (teachHOUSTON), Donna Stokes (NSM Associate Dean/Physics faculty), Leah McAlister-Shields (formerly teachHOUSTON, now NSF program director), and co-authors from Texas A&M University published the article, Multi-layered Mentoring: Exemplars from a U.S. STEM Teacher Education Program. The article appeared online in Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice. The featured case focuses on STEM, although multi-layered mentoring could occur in other subject areas or in general pre-service teacher education.

James Flynn (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) received a $1.2 million research grant from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The award will support Flynn and his team’s research project aimed at assessing the impacts of biomass burning, wind-blown dust pollutants, and soot on air quality in Texas. Biomass burning can include wildfires, agricultural burning, and prescribed burns. The research focuses on urban air quality in major Texas cities, including Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and El Paso, and conducted measurements during the 2023 Texas ozone season (roughly April 1–Oct 31) using optical instruments.

George Fox and Madhan Tirumalai (Biology & Biochemistry) published “Ribosomal protein cluster organization in Asgard archaea” in the journal Archaea with colleagues from University of Texas at Austin and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. It has been proposed that the superphylum of Asgard Archaea may represent a historical link between the kingdoms Archaea and Eukarya. The ribosome (with its roots dating back to the origins of life) translates the message from the DNA into protein and is composed of ribosomal proteins and RNA. These ribosomal proteins themselves are encoded in the genome in discrete gene clusters. This study shows that in many cases, ribosomal protein gene clusters/operons are less conserved in their organization in the Asgard group than in other Archaea. Thus, as one goes across phylogeny from bacteria to archaea to asgard archaea to eukaryotes, the gene order is increasingly dispersed (less conserved).

Tony Frankino (Biology & Biochemistry) was awarded a Mentor Award (Mid-Career) from the Biology Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research. The award committee recognized the accomplishments of Frankino in two realms, both as a scientific research mentor and as a leader committed to structural change that supports underrepresented students in STEM. Some of his achievements include the creation of the Biology & Biochemistry Undergraduate Research Scholarship Program and serving as a member of the team that organizes and secures grants for the GalápaGo! Research-Based Study Abroad program.

Pavan Hosur (Physics) and former student Rauf Giwa published in Physical Review Letters – “Superconductor Vortex Spectrum Including Fermi Arc States in Time-Reversal Symmetric Weyl Semimetals.” In this work, Hosur and Giwa theoretically explored the quantum mechanical nature of “superconductor vortices,” structures that appear in many superconductors immersed in moderate magnetic fields when the superconductor forms from a type of semimetal dubbed Weyl semimetal. The research required technical innovations as traditional theoretical tools for metals and insulators fail for Weyl semimetals. The remarkable outcome was the prediction of “supersymmetry” – a hypothetical symmetry of nature that has evaded discovery for over half a century – inside the vortex. The next crucial step entails experimental verification of the theoretical predictions.

Randy Lee (Chemistry) is part of the UH research team that will establish the Welch Center for Advanced Bioactive Materials Crystallization. The center, led by Jeffrey Rimer of Cullen College of Engineering, is the result of an inaugural $5 million Catalyst for Discovery Program Grant from The Welch Foundation. The Welch center at UH aims to improve understanding of the intricate crystallization processes, inventing fresh ways, both through experiments and computer simulations, to predict and manage how crystals form. Lee’s group will create specially designed nanoparticles with specific surface properties and chemical characteristics. These nanoparticles will serve as templates for growing bioactive organic crystals on a large scale. Additional members of the Center’s research team are on the engineering faculty.

Mariam Manuel (teachHOUSTON, Mathematics) is principal investigator of a $1.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation for a community partnership to provide a culturally responsive STEM experience to underserved high school students enrolled in alternative schooling systems in Houston. The Racial Equity through Student Engagement and Teaching in STEM (RESET in STEM) program, an idea borne from UH’s successful STEM RISE program, aims to address the systemic barriers that hinder economically and socially disadvantaged students’ access to STEM education and to create a more inclusive and equitable educational environment. RESET in STEM is a collaboration between NSM, College of Education and Cullen College of Engineering, as well as Eight Million Stories, Inc., a community-based non-profit that works with local school districts and community organizations and supports at-promise students in education completion, industry-based certifications and wraparound services. NSM faculty members Jacqueline Ekeoba (teachHOUSTON, Mathematics) and Donna Stokes (NSM Associate Dean/Physics faculty) are serving as Co-PIs on the project.

Ognjen Miljanić (Chemistry) and his team have come up with an innovative solution for nuclear waste management: molecular crystals based on cyclotetrabenzil hydrazones. The versatile crystals are capable of capturing iodine—one of the most common radioactive fission products—in aqueous and organic solutions, and on the interface between the two. The breakthrough was detailed in Cell Reports Physical Science. Alexandra Robles, a former chemistry doctoral student, was the first author of the paper. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation. Read More

Martín Nuñez (Biology & Biochemistry) was part of a team of international biodiversity researchers who authored a new report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. The report presents major findings on the gravity of impacts from invasive alien species on our planet. Researchers found more than 37,000 alien species have been introduced by human activities over the centuries, and this conservative estimate is rising at unprecedented rates. Additionally, more than 3,500 of these are harmful invasive alien species, impacting humans, animals, and plants. Nuñez was a coordinating lead author of the chapter covering the impacts of invasive species.

Carlos Ordonez (Physics) organized a day-long visit for Eastwood Academy’s 12 AP Physics students and their teacher. UH Physics aims to establish a pipeline for the physics undergraduate program through this connection with the HISD school. After a general introduction and tour of UH, the students received presentations, demonstrations, and tours of various physics facilities. Topics presented by UH Physics faculty included a welcome from Kevin Bassler and Donna Stokes, physics career information from Lisa Koerner, research in theoretical and experimental nuclear physics/heavy ion collisions from Claudia Ratti, research in biophysics by Greg Morrison, and a discussion of development of an undergraduate course in quantum computing by Physics Ph.D. student Pablo Lopez-Duque and Ordonez. Duque’s work is funded by the UH Center for Mexican American and Latino Studies. The group then toured the UH Observatory and The Center for Superconductivity at UH with presentations by Paul Chu, Karoline Muller, and James Meen.

Matthew Pariyothorn (Program Director, Academic Operations, Computer Science) was named Graduate Advisor of the Month by the UH Graduate School. The recognition was for the month of August.

Donna Pattison (NSM Assistant Dean/Biology & Biochemistry faculty) hosted a four-day CRISPR in the Classroom Workshop at UH and led a similar workshop at Houston Community College. Participants were exposed to hands-on lab activities to learn the basics of using CRISPR for gene editing so they can integrate it into their undergraduate laboratory curriculum. Twenty instructors from 14 two- and four-year institutions attended the UH event. The workshop is part of a National Science Foundation grant awarded to UH to advance life science research in the classroom. The grant provides funding for educator workshops, a lab kit, and curriculum and support through the CRISPR in the Classroom Network.

Ioannis Pavlidis (Computer Science) and colleagues at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute published study results in IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing. The researchers reported that people with a predisposition to anxiety exhibit a significantly higher heart rate when they drive as opposed to those who are not predisposed to anxiety. Anxious drivers had a heart rate about five beats per minute higher than non-anxious drivers under similar conditions. The reported stress effect was measured under good weather and light traffic, that is, ideal commuting conditions. The micro-stressors appear to overload the drivers who experience them, because for similar itineraries, afflicted drivers consistently report being more tired than non-afflicted drivers. Collectively, the study’s long- and short-term results have potential lifestyle, safety, and insurance implications.

Weiyi Peng (Biology & Biochemistry, CNRCS) is part of a team receiving an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) award of $45 million. The team aims to rapidly develop a sense-and-respond implant technology that could slash U.S. cancer-related deaths by more than 50%. The team, led by Rice University, includes researchers from seven states. They will fast-track development and testing of a first-of-its-kind approach to cancer treatment that aims to dramatically improve immunotherapy outcomes for patients with ovarian, pancreatic and other difficult-to-treat cancers. Peng is co-principal investigator and one of three group leaders of the project. She will provide expertise in tumor immunology and lead preclinical testing of the targeted hybrid oncotherapeutic regulation, or THOR, technology, along with discovery of biomarkers associated with efficacy. Her portion of the project is $2.1 million. Read More

Zhifeng Ren (Physics, TcSUH) presented a webinar sponsored by Physics World, “Boron arsenide single crystals with ultrahigh thermal conductivity and carrier mobility.” He discussed what has been done and the potential of this special material for semiconductor devices of the future.

A team led by Jaspal Subhlok (Computer Science) published Enhancing lecture video navigation with AI generated summaries, in Springer’s Education and Information Technologies, a top journal in the field of education/educational technologies. This research was conducted as part of the Ph.D. dissertation of Mohammad Rajiur Rahman and M.S. thesis of Raga Shalini Koka in collaboration with Shishir Shah and Thamar Solorio. The paper focuses on improving navigation of lecture videos for students with AI generation of visual and textual summaries of lecture video segments. Evaluation was performed against keywords and summary images selected by human experts. Surveys showed that 79% (72%) of the users agreed that a visual (textual) summary made a lecture video more useful.

Natalie Sumrow (NSM Undergraduate Advising Center) received a 2023 President’s Excellence Award for Effective Leadership. Sumrow serves NSM students as the executive director of the advising center. The annual awards program recognizes employees for their commendable service, dedication and contributions that go above and beyond the requirements or expectations of their jobs.

Madhan Tirumalai (Biology & Biochemistry) convened a cross-track symposium session titled “Origins of Life: From Prebiotic Chemistry to the Origins of Coded Protein Synthesis” at the annual microbial science meeting of the American Society of Microbiology, “ASM Microbe.” The session covered current understanding of prebiotic processes/pathways, the place of the ribosomes, and emergence of coded protein synthesis in the origins of life.

Rakesh Verma (Computer Science) published collaborative research with Nachum Dershowitz of Tel Aviv University. Their opinion paper, ‘Rebutting Rebuttals,’ addresses the impact of the author rebuttal process in computer science conferences. It published in Communications of the ACM. Their findings could change how computer science conferences are organized in the future.

Rakesh Verma and Gopal Pandurangan (Computer Science) were awarded a $798,530 grant from the Department of Defense to research machine learning techniques to identify or predict software vulnerabilities and cyberattacks. The team is looking at deceptive attacks such as phishing in the form of emailed job scams. They also want to use machine learning techniques to try to find portions of the code that may contain bugs. Another project component involves using distributed machine learning to develop scalable algorithms for analyzing large data sets as well as decentralized machine learning methods to analyze data without risking data privacy.

Quentin Vicens (Biology & Biochemistry, CNRCS) has been awarded a $1.2 million grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to unravel the mystery of Z-RNA – an enigmatic RNA structure within our cells that plays a critical role in immune response. This work is in collaboration with the laboratory of Beat Vögeli, associate professor at the University of Colorado and co-recipient of the award. Their research teams are on a mission to understand how Z-RNA forms, how often it appears in our genetic material, and what it means for proteins that are known to recognize this structure. They are focusing on a process called RNA editing, where one letter in RNA is transformed into another. This editing happens more in conditions like cancer and infections and is linked to the presence of a unique protein part that can attach to Z-RNA.

Yuxuan Wang (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) was the corresponding author for a paper published on ozone in the Houston area. The research team focused on two ozone episodes in September 2021. They found that while local emissions play a role in the rise of ozone levels in Houston, most of the pollutants can be carried in from other regions across the country, leading to excess ozone pollution. Their analysis revealed that roughly 63% of the excess ozone during this period was due to the transported ozone from the central and northern part of the country, while approximately 37% of the elevated ozone production was attributed to local photochemistry. The work was published in the journal Science of The Total Environment. Their findings offer insights into strategies to mitigate future ozone pollution for the region. UH authors on the paper included Ehsan Soleimanian, Wei Li, Xueying Liu, Travis Griggs, and James Flynn. Read More

Arthur Weglein (Physics) was a keynote speaker at the 2023 Society of Exploration Geophysicists/Kuwait Oil Company Workshop on Advances in Land & Shallow Marine Multiple Attenuation and Imaging. The conference took place in Kuwait City, Kuwait. Weglein delivered his presentation virtually and provided expert analysis with his address, “Recent Advances and Open Issues in Multiple Attenuation and Imaging, including Land and Shallow Marine.”

Julia Wellner (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) and geology master’s graduate Andrew Stearns (first and corresponding author) published findings that 27 million cubic meters of sediment, or 16 Astrodomes, moved through 12 Houston waterways and Addicks and Barker reservoirs during hurricane Harvey, the largest rainfall event in U.S. history. This was due in part to modifications made by humans to bayous, rivers and streams over the past century that could seriously impact future flooding events and be costly to the City of Houston. They found a strong correlation between stream modification and sediment bypass through those streams. The findings are published in the journal Geology. The study provides policymakers with vital information for sediment management in urban watersheds. Shuhab Khan (EAS) and Jerome Kendall of the University of New Mexico are contributing authors of the study. Read More

Wa Xian and Frank McKeon (Biology & Biochemistry) have discovered five disease-causing stem cells in the lungs of patients with advanced cystic fibrosis, and that these variants drive key aspects of CF pathology including inflammation, fibrosis and mucin secretion. Their findings were published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. They found that cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CTFR)-modulating drugs did not suppress the proinflammatory activity or gene expression of the three CF variants that drive inflammation. These findings raise the possibility that these inflammatory stem cell variants are the source of the persistent inflammation in patients treated with CTFR modulators. If true, their findings suggest that the inflammatory stem cell variants are key targets for drug discovery to augment the major therapeutic advances brought by CFTR modulators. Other UH authors on the paper include Shan Wang, Suchan Niroula, Ashley Hoffman, Melika Khorrami, Melina Khorrami, Bovey Liu, Justin Li, and Matthew Vincent.
Xian and McKeon were invited to present at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Biomedical Lecture Series. Their presentation was entitled “Emergence of Intrinsic Stem Cell Variants in Chronic Lung Diseases: Are They Pathogenic and What Can We Do About Them?”

Ding-Shue “Jerry” Yang (Chemistry) received a Salute to Excellence Award from the American Chemical Society, Greater Houston Section. The award recognized his leadership in the “Chemistry Olympiad program where he shares his excitement for chemistry and inspires high school students to achieve excellence on their journey to becoming future scientists.” Yang has been serving as the coordinator for the U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad since 2017. Over the seven years, especially through the pandemic, he came up with innovative methods to increase participation every year. As a result of his work on the Chemistry Olympiad, the ACS Greater Houston Section received a 2023 ChemLuminary Award from the American Chemical Society that reads “Society Committee on Education (SOCED), Outstanding U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad, Greater Houston Local Section, American Chemical Society.”

Ping Yi (Biology & Biochemistry, CNRCS) leads a team investigating castrate-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). Yi, Steven Nguyen (CNRCS), and colleagues from Baylor College of Medicine, published findings in PNAS. Despite initial responses to androgen-deprivation therapy, nearly all prostate cancer patients develop CRPC within a few years. The team found a specific chemical modification occurs on the androgen receptor (AR) protein in certain conditions where levels of male hormones are reduced to castration conditions. This modification involves another protein, TRAF4, which is frequently overexpressed in advanced prostate cancers. They demonstrated overexpression of TRAF4 leads to the conversion of androgen-sensitive prostate cancer cells into castration-resistant cells, both in lab experiments and in live samples. These findings provide an important basis for identifying a group of CRPC patients who might respond well to a treatment targeting the specific molecular changes caused by the AR modification, providing a possible treatment option for these patients.

Melissa Zastrow (Chemistry) is the 2023 recipient of the Paul Saltman Memorial Award in Bioinorganic Chemistry from the Metals in Biology Gordon Research Conference. The conference is regarded as the top forum for research in bioinorganic chemistry. Zastrow will present a lecture on her research and formally receive the award at the conference in January. Paul Saltman was known for his contributions to nutritional science, particularly the nutritional role of trace metals such as iron, copper, zinc and manganese. Each year, the award is given to an assistant professor who has made outstanding contributions to the field of bioinorganic chemistry, particularly with research into how organisms acquire and use metals in biological processes. The award recognizes Zastrow for her work on how metals affect the human gastrointestinal tract.

Youtong Zheng (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) received an$875,000 Department of Energy Early Career Award for his research project to better understand how pollution impacts coastal storms and to explore more accurate forecasting methods. A phenomenon known as the aerosol invigoration effect is being hypothesized to cause the rise in stronger storms. Zheng’s project looks to test this hypothesis by using a next-generation climate model that allows scientists to take a closer look at the components of combative storms. Additionally, Zheng is looking at the changes in coastal storm intensity, including the speed of updrafts in storms, the amount of precipitation produced by the storms, and the depth of the storms. He is one of 93 early career scientists in the U.S. to receive the funding. This year’s awardees represent 48 universities and 12 National Labs in 27 states.

Rebecca Zufall and Richard Meisel (Biology & Biochemistry) are leading a multi-institutional program that will provide 10 post-baccalaureates per year the opportunity to conduct evolutionary genetics research at major research universities in southeast Texas. The program is funded for four years by a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation and is part of the existing Southeast Texas Evolutionary Genetics and Genomics, or STEGG, network. The new STEGG INTEgrative Research and Collaborative Training program, or STEGG-INTERACT, will also provide participants with financial support, professional skills and mentorship from professors and their graduate students. Participants will be recruited from UH, Texas A&M, University of St. Thomas, Prairie View A&M University, Texas Southern University, UH-Downtown, and North Carolina A&T.