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 breakthrough@nsm.uh.edu or contact Kathy Major at ksmajor@uh.edu or 713-743-4023.
Alumni
True Furrh (Environmental Sciences ’20) and Laura Taylor (Geology ’20) have been awarded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. The GRF provides financial support for three years within a five-year fellowship period, comprising a $34,000 stipend per 12-month fellowship year. Furrh is pursuing a Ph.D. at Rice University, and Taylor will enter graduate school at MIT in June.
Jingjing Zong (M.S. ’14, Ph.D. ’19, Geophysics) presented “A walkway VSP survey for fractured-basement imaging using RSS-RTM” at the Society for Exploration Geophysicists Online Experience 2020 Annual Meeting. Her presentation was ranked by the judges as one of the top 25 of 764 papers presented at the meeting.
Students
Stephanie Araiza (Ph.D. Student, Chemistry) received a $49,623 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate program to work on nitrate non-linear optical (NLO) materials, whose applications include photolithography and semiconductor manufacturing. The NSF program aims to improve the pathway to “the professoriate and success for historically underrepresented minority doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty.” Read More
Computer Science Teams Claim First and Second Place at HP’s University Bot-a-Thon.
- First Place Team: Nykolas Farhangi, Ross Koepke, Muhammad Usman, and Syed Rizvi
- Second Place Team: Sonny Ha, Edwin Campuzano, Mohamed Farah, and Reeba Sayed
The HP competition, in partnership with AWS, featured students from Texas universities. Participants engaged, learned and teamed up to build bots and compete to automate business processes using AWS Cloud Computing and AI/ML Services. Working together, AWS and HP mentors guided students through their learning, building the bots to address real-life business opportunities.
Kristen Harris (Biology Major), Amenda Khoei (Biochemical & Biophysical Sciences Major), and Rael Memnon (Biology Major) have been selected for the Partnership for Careers in Cancer Science & Medicine summer program hosted by The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. The students will collaborate and work alongside cancer experts for 10 weeks.
Riddhiman Medhi (Ph.D. Summer Graduate, Chemistry) was the Summer/Fall 2020 recipient of the Dan E. Wells Outstanding Dissertation Award. The award was announced during the NSM Graduation Celebration. His dissertation was “Enhancing the Scope of Metal Oxide Nanoparticles via Doping and Plasmonic Coupling.” The work centers on the development of reliable new procedures for the synthesis of nanoparticles used to make enhanced semiconductor devices. His advisor was Randy Lee. Medhi is currently doing postdoctoral research at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Mitchell Montalvo (Computer Science Major) and Christopher Williams (Chemistry Major, December Graduate) are lieutenants in the UH Air Force ROTC. They were competitively selected to serve in the newest branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, the United States Space Force. Related Photo
Gabrielle Olinger (Physics Major) has been selected to receive a Barry Goldwater Scholarship. The scholarship program fosters and encourages outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. This year, 410 scholars were selected from a field of 1,256 students nominated by their colleges and universities across the nation. Goldwater Scholars receive up to $7,500 to support their undergraduate education.
Alejandro Ramirez (Ph.D. Student, Physics) has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. The GRF provides financial support for three years within a five-year fellowship period, comprising a $34,000 stipend per 12-month fellowship year. The student’s institution also receives a $12,000 yearly payment in lieu of tuition and fees in the three years of fellowship funding. His graduate advisor is Andrew Renshaw.
Jamie Stafford (Ph.D. Student, Physics) and her mentor Claudia Ratti received an NSF INTERN grant. The award supports a six-month research opportunity for Stafford at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory working with a collaborator on a project related to her dissertation. While there, she will be trying to come up with an independent way to characterize the phase transition from ordinary protons and neutrons into the quark gluon plasma, which is the phase that existed microseconds after the Big Bang.
Faculty
Jakoah Brgoch (Associate Professor, Chemistry) and members of his research group (Ziyan Zhang, Aria Mansouri Tehrani, Blake Day), in collaboration with a researcher at Manhattan College, have reported a machine learning model that can accurately predict the hardness of new materials, allowing scientists to more readily find compounds suitable for use in a variety of applications. The work was reported in Advanced Materials. Superhard materials are in high demand in industry, from energy production to aerospace, but up until now, finding suitable new materials has largely been a matter of trial and error based on classical materials such as diamonds. The researchers report finding more than 10 new and promising stable borocarbide phases; work is now underway to design and produce the materials so they can be tested in the lab.
Brgoch and graduate student Ya Zhuo co-authored a perspective piece, Opportunities for Next-Generation Luminescent Materials through Artificial Intelligence, that was highlighted on the January 21 cover of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. In the perspective, they discuss opportunities for using AI and machine learning to transform the materials used in lighting and display applications.
Albert Cheng (Professor, Computer Science) was inducted as a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery. In 2020, 64 distinguished members were named. Recipients are longstanding ACM members who are selected by their peers for a range of accomplishments that move the computing field forward. Cheng was recognized for outstanding scientific contributions to computing.
Cheng will also serve as the general chair of the 2021 IEEE RTCSA (International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications). IEEE RTCSA is among the top four conferences in real-time systems and is the top conference held in Asia in this field.
Wei-Kan Chu (Cullen University Professor, Physics) received the Council of Southern Graduate Schools Outstanding Mentor Award. He was nominated for this award after receiving the UH Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award in 2020.
Lorenzo Colli and Jonny Wu (Assistant Professors, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) along with graduate student Spencer Fuston have been awarded have been awarded 2.5 million Central Processing Unit hours by the National Science Foundation for use of its high-end computing system at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. They will be investigating an unexplained, lost ocean present below the western United States. The monetary value of these awarded resources is more than $2 million.
Lorenzo Colli (Assistant Professor), Jonny Wu (Assistant Professor), Dale Bird (Research Associate Professor) and Earth & Atmospheric Sciences graduate student Yi-Wei Chen published findings on tectonic plates and the deep Earth in Nature Communications. It is long thought that tectonic plates move because they are pulled by the weight of their sinking portions and that an underlying, hot, softer layer called asthenosphere serves as a passive lubricant. The UH team analyzed the Caribbean and found the asthenosphere is actually flowing vigorously, moving fast enough to drive Caribbean plate motions. The findings have implications for understanding the shape of the Earth’s surface, its evolution over time through the appearance and disappearance of shallow seas, low-lying land bridges and the forces that move tectonic plates and cause earthquakes.
Seamus Curran (Professor, Physics) developed a new nanotech coating, called Capture Coating, that is being implemented in several campus buildings by the Facilities/Construction Management Preventive Maintenance team. The coating will improve the ability of air filters to trap the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. It was developed at UH’s Technology Bridge by Curran Biotech. One of the unique traits of this technology is that treated filters have minimal effect on the HVAC operating systems, requiring no mechanical system upgrades or air flow adjustments.
Mini Das (Associate Professor, Physics) has been named a Scialog Fellow for the Research Corporation for Science Advancement’s new initiative: Advancing Bioimaging. Fifty-five early career researchers were selected for this honor. Sponsored by RCSA and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, with additional support from the Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation, the series of three yearly meetings will bring together a diverse group of scientists from a wide range of fields to address the challenges involved in enhancing high-resolution imaging of tissues to support basic science and the treatment of disease. Participants will include optical physicists, chemists, engineers, and biologists.
Pavan Hosur (Assistant Professor, Physics) received an NSF CAREER Award with funding of $575,000 for his proposal, “Weak and Strong Correlations in Topological Semimetals.” The award supports theoretical and computational research, as well as education, on a new and fascinating class of materials, topological semimetals, and the way electrons organize themselves in these materials. Read More
Krešimir Josić (Professor, Mathematics) and William Ott (Associate Professor), former postdoc Bhargav Karamched, and mathematics student Megan Stickler, with collaborators from the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Germany and University of Colorado Boulder, published a study that tackles how groups make decisions and the dynamics that make for fast and accurate decision making. The research, published in Physical Review Letters, found that networks that consisted of both impulsive and deliberate individuals made, on average, quicker and better decisions than a group with homogenous thinkers. Josić, senior author of the study, noted that the process works best when individuals in a group make the most of their varied backgrounds to collect the necessary materials and knowledge to make a final decision.
Mikyoung Jun (ConocoPhilips Professor of Data Science, Mathematics) received a National Science Foundation Algorithms for Threat Detection grant to develop statistical methods to model terrorism patterns across the world in order to provide scientists, policy makers and the general public useful information.
Lisa Koerner (Associate Professor, Physics), a particle physicist, is principal investigator on a $1.65 million grant from the Department of Energy funding projects related to the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, known as DUNE. In addition to Koerner, it will fund work by Andrew Renshaw and Daniel Cherdack, both assistant professors of physics. If, as scientists believe, equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created during the Big Bang, why didn’t they cancel each other out, leaving nothing? Instead, matter persisted. This work could help to establish the mechanism by which all the antimatter disappeared.
Mark Meier (Professor, Physics) and director of UH’s Low Frequency Seismic Technologies Consortium accepted the Licensing Executive Society’s 2020 Deal of Distinction Award in the Chemicals, Energy, Environment, and Materials Sector. In his acceptance speech, Meier noted that “the Low Frequency Seismic Technology License and Consortium Foundational Agreement between UH and the ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company licenses a valuable body of research developed by ExxonMobil to UH under terms that encourage both academic and industrial participation in furthering research and technological development, and eventual commercialization.”
Weiyi Peng (Assistant Professor, Biology & Biochemistry, Center for Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling) is part of a group of cancer and Parkinson’s disease research experts investigating whether the diseases are caused by similar gene alterations. The group is looking at why changes in the LRRK2 and Parkin genes can cause Parkinson’s and cancer. Peng, who is both an M.D. and Ph.D., is part of a national group who received nearly $6 million from Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s to study the similar pathogenesis of the two diseases. UH will receive about $1M of grant funds. Peng’s group will provide immunology expertise that could eventually help develop new, immune-based therapies for Parkinson’s.
Zhifeng Ren (M.D. Anderson Chair Professor, Physics, and Director, Texas Center for Superconductivity) led a team of researchers who have reported an oxygen evolving catalyst that takes just minutes to grow at room temperature and is capable of efficiently producing both clean drinking water and hydrogen from seawater. Paired with a previously reported hydrogen evolution reaction catalyst, it can achieve industrially required current density for overall seawater splitting at low voltage. The findings were published in Energy & Environmental Science. Ren, corresponding author for the paper, said speedy, low-cost production is critical to commercialization.
Madhan Tirumalai (Research Assistant Professor, Biology & Biochemistry) gave an education and public outreach presentation on “Life at Earth’s Extremes” for the Science Café program organized by the Las Cruces Museum of Nature and Science and Sigma Xi. He discussed extremophiles, organisms that can survive and thrive under extremes of temperature, pH, pressure, radiation and other hostile environments.
Ding-Shyue (Jerry) Yang (Associate Professor, Chemistry) and postdoctoral researcher Xing He found a fundamental behavioral difference in the energy transport of solid-supported methanol thin film. Their findings, published in the American Chemical Society’s Nano Letters, could have implications in the behavior of both inorganic 2D materials and organic materials, such as solar panels and human cells.
Julia Wellner (Associate Professor, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) was named by the U.S. Science Support Program as a distinguished lecturer for its Ocean Discovery Lecture Series. The series brings earth science scholars and their knowledge to a variety of institutions including universities, museums and aquaria. Wellner will share scientific discoveries from her 2019 expedition to the Amundsen Sea in west Antarctica, in which she was co-chief for the International Ocean Discovery Program, an international marine research collaboration that explores Earth’s history and dynamics. Wellner will deliver eight lectures in total, with five sponsored by the International Ocean Discovery Program.