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
Laura Barnett (’20, Geology, first author), Peter Copeland, Virginia Sisson and Steve Naruk (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) published Late Cretaceous Uplift of Grand Canyon: Evidence From Fluid Inclusions in the American Journal of Science. Debates have centered around the hypothesis that the Grand Canyon formed during the late Cretaceous, not the Miocene, as previously thought. In this study, fluid trapped within carbonates from the Mauv, Redwall, Supai, and Kaibab formations from Grand Canyon yield entrapment temperatures between 135 and 60 °C. Comparison of these temperatures to time-temperature models suggest that these fluids were trapped from 89 to 58 million years ago accompanied by major denudation of late Cretaceous strata. Both lines of evidence suggest significant uplift of Grand Canyon and the adjacent Colorado Plateau occurred during the late Cretaceous. The authors interpret their findings to be consistent with the initial uplift associated with the early stages of formation of Grand Canyon during the late Cretaceous.
Julianne Lamb (M.S. ’14, Geology), a geologist with Santon Alaska, received the Alaska Oil and Gas Association Rising Star Award. The award honors a young professional under the age of 35 who has made an immediate and definitive impact on the oil and gas industry in Alaska. Lamb led the charge to bring “GeoIsotopes” to Santos Alaska in 2023. This technology provides unique insights into reservoir characteristics and seal integrity through a deep understanding of source rocks and migration pathways. Now a key figure in Alaska’s carbon capture and storage industry, her work ensures safe, long-term CO2 storage.
Students
Galina Aglyamova (Biology Ph.D. student) received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. The fellowship offers three years of support over a five-year period with a stipend of $37,000 per twelve-month fellowship year. The academic institution receives a direct payment of $16,000 toward the cost of education in lieu of all required tuition and mandatory fees for each of the three years of fellowship funding. Her mentor is Adam Stuckert.
Caleb Broodo (Physics Ph.D. student) was selected for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program. He is among 86 students from 31 states selected for the program which provides world-class training and access to state-of-the-art facilities and resources at DOE national laboratories. Broodo, whose research focuses on heavy ion nuclear physics, is working at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. His one-year assignment began in June. Broodo’s mentor is Rene Bellwied.
Yen-Chen Chen (Chemistry Ph.D. student) received an American Chemical Society Division of Physical Chemistry Outstanding Student Poster Award at the ACS National Meeting in New Orleans. The poster “Ambient STM visualization of self-assembled Cyclopentadienylmolybdenum(ii) tricarbonyl dimers” addressed work in which they are able to see each individual electrocatalytic molecule after stabilizing their instrument with ultrapure water. Chen’s mentor is Naihao Chiang.
EAS Team Wins Third Place at AAPG Imperial Barrel Award Global Finals
A team of five Ph.D. and M.S. graduate students from UH’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences won third place in the global finals of the Imperial Barrel Award Program of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). They received the Stoneley Medal and a $5,000 cash prize for the UH AAPG Wildcatters student group. Team members are Michael Daniel (Ph.D., Team Captain), Daniel Maya (Ph.D.), Gabriel Lopez (M.S.), Edgar Moreno (M.S.). and Josh Miller (M.S.). Faculty advisors were Paul Mann and John Castagna, and industry advisors included Gary Guthrie (retired from Marathon) and Steve Walkinshaw (Vision Exploration). The UH team analyzed a petroleum data set from Bristol Bay, Alaska.
Abigail Hancock (Physics major) was selected for the 2024 Lunar and Planetary Institute Summer Intern Program in Planetary Science. The program offers undergraduates the opportunity to experience cutting-edge research in lunar and planetary science, working one-on-one with scientists at the LPI and NASA Johnson Space Center. This year, 11 undergraduate students were selected to participate in the program from June 3-August 9.
Dooyoung Kim (Chemistry Ph.D. Student, first author) and Tom Teets (Chemistry) published two manuscripts in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (June 10 and July 2). Photosensitizers are molecules that absorb light and convert that energy into a chemical potential. At present, earth-abundant photosensitizers tend to have short excited-state lifetimes, meaning they rapidly dissipate their energy after absorbing light, precluding any productive chemical processes from occurring. These papers introduced a new class of copper photosensitizers and unveiled two distinct strategies to obtain long excited-state lifetimes in these compounds. The first used sterically bulky ligand designs, meaning that the organic molecules that surrounded the copper were physically large, preventing structural distortions known to dissipate energy after light absorption. The second used a “triplet reservoir effect” strategy which introduces an organic molecule to the periphery of the photosensitizer that can store excited-state energy for longer timescales. In both cases, these modifications led to improved performance in photocatalytic reactions on organic compounds, showing that the ability to extend the excited-state lifetime is beneficial to applications where the absorbed light energy is used to drive chemical transformations. The July 2 publication involved collaborators from North Carolina State University and Case Western Reserve University.
Daniel Maya (Geology Ph.D. student) represented UH and Ecuador at the AAPG Leadership Summit held in Santa Marta, Colombia, for students and young professionals in the Latin America and Caribbean Region. Maya represented the Young Professionals of Ecuador and the Latin and Caribbean students studying at U. S. universities. The summit featured breakout sessions focused on leadership development, technical topics, and networking opportunities. Invited speakers and industry experts shared insights on the latest advancements in geoscience and how these advances could be shared with the AAPG young professional and student groups. One of the main topics in the presentations and panel discussions was the rapid growth of young professionals and students in the Latin America and Caribbean Region and how AAPG leadership could help foster this growth.
Jack McLaughlin (Geology M.S. student) received the $2,500 Gene M. Shoemaker Graduate Scholarship Award. It was presented by Henry Wise, President of the American Institute of Professional Geologists-Texas section. McLaughlin also received a plaque and a copy of the book, Shoemaker by Levy: The Man Who Made an Impact by David H. Levy. McLaughlin plans to study the ability to trace oil field brine contamination of shallow aquifers using groundwater chemistry and clay compositions.
Juan Pablo Ramos (Geology Ph.D. student) authored an article, “Natural Gas: The best ally for Colombia’s energy transition,” in the magazine GEOExPro. His article was one of several featured in the cover story section on the state of global gas exploration.
High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program
A group of UH student researchers were selected to run experiments during the week-long winter campaign of the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Two UH physics majors, Jason Ruszkowski and Alicia Dykema, served as principal investigators, leading projects during the program. Other UH students were Joshlyn Mendez, Tyler Philo, and Diego Sosa. Their faculty mentor was Edgar Bering (Physics). It is rare for students to be asked to serve as PIs, and all other HAARP projects were led by university faculty from around the nation. HAARP provides a unique platform for exploring the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The students not only gained practical experience but also made meaningful contributions to advancing the understanding of atmospheric physics.
Dan E. Wells Outstanding Dissertation Award
Xin Shi (Ph.D. graduate, Physics) was the Spring 2024 recipient of the Dan E. Wells Outstanding Dissertation Award for his dissertation, “Advancing Nontoxic, Antimony-based 1-2-2-type Thermoelectric Zintls.” Shi’s research focused on the direct conversion of thermal energy, which is abundant in our environment, to electrical energy, which powers our society. His advisor was Zhifeng Ren. Shi received a certificate and an award of $1,000. See Photo
UH Teaching Excellence - Graduate Teaching Assistant
Lukasz Krzywon (Mathematics Ph.D. student) and Elliot Lagueux (Biology Ph.D. student) received the UH Teaching Excellence Award given to Graduate Teaching Assistants. The award is given for demonstrated excellence in teaching. Only three awards were given in 2024.
Gustavo Valdivia (Physics Ph.D. student) was awarded the Lydia Mendoza Fellowship from the Center for Mexican American and Latino Studies at UH. The fellowship includes a stipend of $16,500 for up to two years. His mentor is Carlos Ordonez.
Faculty/Staff
Eric Bittner (Physics) organized an outreach activity for 25 scouts and their leaders from Hong Kong. The scouts were part of an “Astronomy Club” at their high school. During the visit, the Astronomy Society of UH introduced the scouts to the UH Observatory, offering them a chance to look through the telescope to see Jupiter and the Orion Nebula. Bittner gave a talk to the group prior to their nighttime viewing in the Observatory. After visiting Houston and UH, the group traveled to Dallas to see the total eclipse.
David Blecher and Mehrdad Kalantar (both Mathematics) published “Operator Space Complexification Transfigured” in International Mathematics Research Notices. The first main achievement of their paper is a novel generalization of the important process of ‘complexification’ (turning real spaces into complex ones). This is accomplished via the second main advance: the discovery of the induced representation construction in the category of operator spaces. This has previously been elusive even for Banach spaces since it is not clear how to norm the induced space in a natural way. Induced representations are a key tool for studying groups of symmetries or transformations. It has important applications in many areas of mathematics and its applications, for example in quantum mechanics. The authors show that for a large class of group actions the induced space has a unique operator space norm.
David Blecher (Mathematics) and a collaborator from North-West University published “On a Class of Subdiagonal Algebras” in Complex Analysis and Operator Theory. The authors investigate some new classes of operator algebras which they call semi-σ-finite subdiagonal. Although part of an ongoing program, these constitute the most general setting to date for a noncommutative Hardy space theory based on Arveson’s subdiagonal algebras. In the paper, they develop this theory and study the properties of these new classes. The theory of Hardy spaces is a cornerstone of modern analysis. It is a powerful tool for many applications, pure and applied, from signal processing, control theory and Fourier analysis to scattering theory.
Calista Brown (Mathematics) will be serving again as a Staff Council Representative for the Academic Affairs Division.
Naihao Chiang (Chemistry, corresponding author) published “Teaching Acid-Base Fundamentals and Introducing pH Using Butterfly Pea Flower Tea” in Journal of Chemical Education. The paper, based on an outreach event reaching 100 students, details an activity using the anthocyanins found in butterfly pea flowers. Students, ages 7- 14, performed an extraction of the flower’s anthocyanin pH indicators with hot water. They used this indicator and its vast range of colors to compare the acidities and basicities of different household solutions. The activity introduced students to concepts in acid-base chemistry, including acid/base strength and pH, solute dissolution, neutralization reactions, and qualitative analysis. Co-authors from UH were Wallee Naimi, Stanley Saldana (both UH Chemistry), Lionnel Ronduen, Heather Domjan (both UH STEM Center) and Gail Vinnacombe-Willson of BioNanoPlasmonics, Spain.
Mini Das (Physics) and Seema Khurana (Biology & Biochemistry) were named Moores Professors. This five-year, renewable professorship is given to faculty in recognition of outstanding teaching, research and service.
Zhigang Deng (Computer Science, co-corresponding author) authored “Real-time Wing Deformation Simulations for Flying Insects” with colleagues from Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics and East China Jiaotong University. The paper, published at the ACM SIGGRAPH 2024 Conference, addresses simulation of intricate wing deformations of insects with applications in fields such as computer animation and virtual reality. The authors designed an efficient skeleton-driven model to simulate realistic wing deformations across a range of insects. They constructed a virtual skeleton, accurately reflecting the distinct morphological characteristics of individual insect species, as the foundation for the simulation of the intricate deformation wave propagation. To reproduce the bending effect in the deformations, they introduced both internal and external forces on the wing joints, drawing on periodic wing-beat motion and a simplified aerodynamics model. Through various simulation experiments, comparisons, and user studies, they demonstrate the model’s effectiveness, robustness, and adaptability. Deng gave an oral presentation on the paper at the ACM SIGGRAPH 2024 Conference, held July 27-August 2, in Denver.
Jacqueline Ekeoba (teachHOUSTON/Mathematics) delivered a presentation that was part of the UTeach STEM Educators Association Master Teacher Professional Development Series. Her topic – “Building Antiracist Spaces for Inclusive Community Engagement.”
Ekeoba was elected to serve as a Member-at-Large, Alumni Representative, on the UTeach STEM Educators Association (USEA) Executive Board. She will chair the Conference Planning Committee for the 2025 USEA National Conference to be hosted by NevadaTeach at the University of Nevada in Reno.
Paige Evans (teachHOUSTON/Mathematics) is principal investigator on a $3 million National Science Foundation award to help address a STEM teacher shortage and retention crisis. The program, Developing STEM Teacher Leaders in Culturally Responsive Classroom Management, Engineering Design and Induction, is a partnership between UH, the National Math and Science Initiative, and several Houston-area high-need school districts including Pasadena, Alief, and Spring Branch ISDs. teachHOUSTON will select 15 current STEM teachers from its partner districts to serve as Master Teacher Fellows and train them in CRCM, a strategy that involves consideration of students’ backgrounds, cultures, learning styles, and past experiences to create inclusive and supportive learning environments. Each fellow will receive $100,000 in salary supplements over five years. Co-PIs are Amanda Campos and Ramona Mateer (teachHOUSTON/Mathematics), Jerrod Henderson (Engineering), and Virginia Snodgrass Rangel (Education).
Jimmy Flynn, postdoctoral fellow Travis Griggs (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences), and authors from eight other universities published a paper involving multiple research teams conducting atmospheric studies in Houston. The paper, “Spatially distributed atmospheric boundary layer properties in Houston – A value-added observational dataset,” published in the journal Scientific Data. Houston was the site for field campaigns aiming to further our understanding of the feedbacks between convective clouds, aerosols, and atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) properties. The proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and Galveston Bay motivated the collection of spatially distributed observations to disentangle coastal and urban processes. This paper presents a value-added ABL dataset derived from observations collected by the researchers between June 2-September 18, 2022. The dataset spans 14 sites distributed within a ~80-km radius around Houston.
Byron Freelon (Physics) has been selected as a 2024-2025 Fulbright U.S. Scholar for Brazil. His work will engage U.S. and Brazilian scholars in an effort to develop and grow bi-national networks that can improve the career and technical standing of Afro-descendent physicists and improve technical capabilities in the rapidly developing area of inelastic X-ray scattering data interpretation and modeling. He will work with Afro-Brazilian physicists to develop programming that promotes dissemination and exposure of their technical work and will collaborate on efforts to seek funds for English translation services desired by Brazilian researchers.
Karla Adelina Garza (teachHOUSTON/Mathematics postdoctoral researcher) received the American Educational Research Association Narrative Research Special Interest Group 2024 Outstanding Dissertation Award for her dissertation titled “Migrant Students Following the Crops, Teachers Following Their Students: A Narrative Inquiry into Two Migrant Children Who Became Teachers.” The dissertation explores the history of Migrant Education Programs in the U.S. through the lens of the lived experiences of two migrant children who become teachers of migrant and bilingual children. The participant’s experience is told through a first-person testimonial that includes family history and educational and teaching trajectories bridging the two worlds of experiences between migrant students and teachers of migrant children.
Shiv Halasyamani (Chemistry) and Kenneth R. Poeppelmeier (Northwestern University) were recognized for their paper’s inclusion in the Chemistry of Materials 1k Club, a designation when a paper reaches 1,000 citations. A foundational review, “Noncentrosymmetric Oxides,” was published in 1998 as part of a Special Issue on the Frontiers in Inorganic Solid-State Chemistry. At the time, Halasyamani was a graduate student working with Poeppelmeier at Northwestern University’s Department of Chemistry and the Materials Research Center. Their review provided critical insight into the structure-property relationships of noncentrosymmetric oxides. Using the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD) from 1996, nearly 600 noncentrosymmetric oxides were categorized by the authors according to their symmetry-dependent property, crystal class, and cationic coordination environment.
Dan Hauptvogel and Jinny Sisson (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences), along with former graduate student Michael Comas, finished their second open access lab book, Investigating the Earth: Exercises for Physical Geology. This book is a collection of all new lab exercises for EAS introductory level courses. The lab book is printed by Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, so it will be available to all students in the Cougar Textbook Access Program. For students not participating in that program, a printed copy is available for ~$21 from Lulu Press. The authors had a small grant from the UH Library that funded this project.
Said Jalife Jacobo (Chemistry) was named to the inaugural class of Research Corporation for Science Advancement Fellows. The RCSA Fellows program aims to increase faculty diversity in physical sciences. It identifies individuals who exhibit extraordinary potential to drive innovation and make significant contributions to scientific discovery. Jacobo is one of eight postdoctoral scholars selected for the first cohort, and the only member from a Texas university. The group will participate in a multiyear program that includes job search preparation, a mock interview at a host institution, along with feedback and guidance. The goal is to prepare fellows for tenure-track faculty positions. Jacobo is a member Judy Wu’s lab.
Krešimir Josić (Mathematics) was interviewed for an article in New Scientist, “Speed of decision-making reflects our biases.” The New Scientist article, based on findings published in the American Physical Society’s journal, Physical Review E, discusses a study of decision-making, “Fast Decisions Reflect Biases; Slow Decisions Do Not.” Using a mathematical model, the researchers determined that the longer it takes someone to make a choice, the less likely they are to be influenced by their inherent biases. Fast deciders reach their choice quickly because their inherent bias directs them rapidly to some definitive point in “decision space,” while slow deciders take so much longer to accumulate information that they essentially “forget” about their inherent biases. Collaborators were at University of Utah, Florida State University, and University of Colorado Boulder.
Lee Ann Lawrence (NSM Career Center) participated in two training webinars on Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS): Best Practices offered by Quinncia, a company using AI to enhance career readiness. Based on recent upgrades to the ATS software used to sort resumes for the hiring process, the undergraduate/graduate resume templates in HireNSM have been updated to reflect the new ATS scoring system.
Liming Li (Physics, corresponding author), Xun Jiang (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences), Xinyue Wang (Ph.D. student, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences), and colleagues from multiple universities and agencies published findings in Nature Communications that reveal a massive energy imbalance on Saturn, shedding new light on planetary science and evolution and challenging existing climate models for the solar system’s gas giants. This is the first time that a global energy imbalance on a seasonal scale has been observed on a gas giant. The data also suggests that Saturn’s unbalanced energy budget plays a key role in the development of giant storms which are a dominant weather phenomenon in the planet’s atmospheric system. This data may also provide some insight into weather on Earth. Additional UH graduate students, Larry Guan (Physics) and Thishan D. Karandana G and Ronald Albright (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences), conducted the study with Wang, advised by professors Li and Jiang. Other co-authors were from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Wisconsin, University of Maryland, University of Central Florida, University of California, Santa Cruz, Université Côte d’Azur (France), and University of the Basque Country (Spain).
Chin-Yo Lin (Biology & Biochemistry/CNRCS) was corresponding author for research published in the journal Cancers. The study was led by Ph.D. student Asitha Premaratne in collaboration with Qin Feng and her student Tianyi Zhou. Other Ph.D. students in the Lin group, Shinjini Basu and Abhinav Bagchi, also contributed to the study. In their study of the effects of a candidate compound which targets metabolic pathways in HER2-positive breast cancer cells, they unexpectedly discovered that it shuts off the expression of HER2, the major driver and key target in these types of breast cancers. This discovery may provide an alternative approach to treating HER2-positive breast cancers, including those which are insensitive or developed resistance to current therapies targeting HER2. The study was supported by Golfers Against Cancer
Vassiliy Lubchenko, Roman Dmitriev (both Chemistry) and Jenny Green (a St. John’s High School student) published “Cavitation in electron fluids and the puzzles of photoemission spectra in alkali metal” in the journal Physical Review B. Potassium and sodium are usually regarded as “boring” metals, in which the electrons behave like a gas while electron-electron interactions simply amount to making the electrons more inertial. Contrary to this conventional picture, the authors show that electrons in these metals spend a significant fraction of time in the form of static, localized particles, not the usually assumed wave-like entities. This discovery rationalizes an anomalous feature of the photoemission spectra in these materials, which has evaded explanation for decades, and sheds light on the long-standing controversy surrounding the notion of quantum measurement.
Mariam Manuel (teachHOUSTON/Mathematics) presented an invited talk focused on “Culturally Responsive Engineering Design in STEM Learning” at the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Math Department STEM Education Seminar.
Manuel also delivered an invited distinguished lecture at the 2024 American Society for Engineering Education annual conference through the Pre-College Engineering Education division. Her talk, titled “Building Pathways and Breaking Down Barriers in Culturally Responsive and Community-Centered Engineering Education,” served as the plenary session for the division. Manuel explored how culturally responsive practices can complement and integrate with the engineering design process. She also shared best practices and lessons learned in forging authentic partnerships with local communities, emphasizing the importance of trust and shared leadership.
Francisco Martins (Chemistry) is one of 17 scientists chosen to receive the 2024 Merck Research Award for Underrepresented Chemists of Color. Martins is one of only two postdocs in the group of awardees. The award recognizes rising scientists for their research and efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in their communities. The award covers expenses to attend the 2024 Merck Awards Symposium in Rahway, New Jersey, where he will present his research and be honored.
teachHOUSTON faculty/researchers gave several presentations at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Convention and at Invisible Colleges, a conference inside AERA. The presentations were entitled “Pre-service STEM Teachers’ Culturally Responsive Development: A Qualitative Analysis of a Pilot Culturally Responsive Classroom Management Course” (Karen McIntush, Ramona Mateer, and Paige Evans) and “Enhancing STEM Teacher Preparation through Knowledge Communities” (Paige Evans, Karen McIntush, and Karla Adelina Garza).
Ana Medrano (Biology & Biochemistry) and Claudia Neuhauser (Mathematics) were inducted to the National Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, the premier all-discipline honor society at the University of Houston. The Society’s mission is to recognize, encourage, and promote superior scholarship. This honor recognizes outstanding academic achievements and commitment to teaching, learning, and student success at UH.
Rich Meisel (Biology & Biochemistry) and graduated Ph.D. student and first author Danial Asgari published two manuscripts, one in the Journal of Integrative and Comparative Biology and the other in Genome, with colleagues from the USDA-ARS Arthropod-Borne Animal Diseases Research Unit, Kansas State University, and Clemson University. The research examines antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), which combat microbes encountered during feeding or through infections. AMPs can be produced either in response to infection (induced) or continuously (constitutively), but the differences in these production strategies remain poorly understood. The team analyzed the evolution and expression of Defensins, which are ancient AMPs found across animals, in two different fly species. They identified one group of Defensins that were only constitutively expressed in larvae, but inducible in adults. Another group were constitutively expressed in adults and evolving much faster than the other group. The results suggest that variation in microbial communities encountered across life history shape the evolution of immune genes.
Ognjen Miljanić (Chemistry) is one of 11 researchers selected to receive a Research Corporation for Science Advancement Cottrell Plus SEED (Singular Exceptional Endeavors of Discovery) Award for 2024. Each award is $60,000. The competitive Cottrell SEED Award is designed to support members of the Cottrell Scholar community in high-impact research activities. His award is in the New Research Directions category and is for the project, “Putting Water to Work: Binding of Methane Hydrates in Cyclobenzoin Supramolecular Hosts.”
Martin Nuñez (Biology & Biochemistry, lead author) and co-authors from 14 nations published “Including a diverse set of voices to address biological invasions” in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution. The authors state that inclusivity is fundamental to progress in understanding and addressing the global phenomena of biological invasions because inclusivity fosters a breadth of perspectives, knowledge, and solutions. In this paper, they report on how the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessment on invasive alien species prioritized inclusivity, the benefits of this approach, and the remaining challenges.
Weiyi Peng (Biology & Biochemistry, CNRCS) became the interim director of the Center for Nuclear Receptors & Cell Signaling effective July 1.
Dawnelle Prince (NSM Career Center) is serving on the National Association of Colleges and Employers Affinity Group, Individuals Serving & Recruiting Hispanic/Latinx & HSI Students. She was recently named coordinator for the group’s activities for National Hispanic-Serving Institutions Week, September 9-15, 2024.
Claudia Ratti, Anthony Timmins (Physics) and Physics postdoctoral research fellow Johannes Jahan brought the international Pint of Science event to the U.S. Pint of Science takes topics out of the lab or classroom and places them in more social settings, such as pubs and breweries. The goal is to provide the public with greater access to discussions of scientific developments. Ratti and Jahan served as the U.S.-wide event coordinators, and Timmons was the Houston event coordinator. Houston’s Pint of Science events were held for three nights at True Anomaly Brewing, one of five event locations across the country. Faculty and students from Departments of Physics (Rene Bellwied and Rubem Mondaini), Biology & Biochemistry (Preethi Gunaratne, Chrysa Latrick, and Ph.D. student Sakuni Rankothgedera, Chemistry (Ph.D. student Aidan Looby), and Electrical Engineering (Pieremanuele Canepa) gave talks during the Houston event. Nearly 200 people attended the series of lay-friendly talks.
Claudia Ratti (Physics) received a three-year, $600,000 NASA grant to study the properties of neutron stars. She hopes that a better understanding of these stars will unlock new details about our universe, how it formed, and its composition. Neutron stars serve as natural laboratories for studying matter under extreme conditions. The insights gained from observing neutron stars and their mergers help physicists test the limits of nuclear physics and general relativity. She will use the capabilities of NASA’s Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) housed on the International Space Station to examine the components of neutron stars. The research is also relevant for NASA’s Artemis project with Ratti collaborating with NASA to bring new seismographs to the moon. Her calculations will help to narrow down the seismograph properties needed to detect strangelets, a dark matter candidate that could be denser and more stable than common matter.
Zhifeng Ren (Physics/TcSUH) received the Esther Farfel Award, the highest honor accorded to a University faculty member. The award is a symbol of overall career excellence. Recipients are chosen for the significance and national/international impact of their research or creative activity, outstanding teaching ability, and distinctive and exemplary service to the University, the profession and the community. The award carries a cash prize of $10,000.
Ren (Physics/TcSUH) received the 2024 Outstanding Achievement in Thermoelectrics Award presented by the International Thermoelectric Society (ITS). The award recognizes outstanding achievement in scholarship and service to the thermoelectrics community and is the highest recognition for researchers in the field. Ren gave the Award Lecture at the joint 40th International and 20th European Thermoelectric Conference, supported by the ITS and the European Thermoelectric Society. He received a cash prize of $5,000, honorary membership in the ITS, and a one-of-a-kind trophy—a medal engraved out of the thermoelectric SiGe alloy and copper-based electrodes that produced electrical power from radioisotope-produced heat to power the deep space missions since the 1960s.
Zhifeng Ren (Physics/TcSUH), Xin Shi (first author and Physics Ph.D. graduate May 2024), and Shaowei Song (Physics) published in the journal Science, with Guanhui Gao a researcher formerly at Rice University, who is now at UH. The team reported a new approach to predict the realization of band convergence in a series of materials, and after demonstrating that one so-designed material, a p-type Zintl compound, would offer highly efficient thermoelectric performance, fabricated a thermoelectric module. They reported a heat-to-electricity conversion efficiency exceeding 10% at a temperature difference of 475 kelvin, or about 855 degrees Fahrenheit. The materials’ performance remained stable for more than two years.
Jon Rotzien (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) authored a 370-page book entitled “The Explorer’s Mindset: Lessons in Leadership in Applied Geoscience and the Energy Industry.” The book is a collection of 30 interviews with leaders in geoscience, most of them involved in the energy industry focused on oil and gas exploration and production (from companies, academia, government agencies, investment groups, etc.). It aims to characterize the traits of successful geoscience leaders who are responsible for the substantial growth and success of the industry over the last few decades.
Colin Sayers (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) and Sagnik Dasgupta (SLB) published “Comparison of elastic anisotropy in the Middle and Upper Wolfcamp Shale, Midland Basin” in Geophysical Prospecting. Organic-rich shales contain large amounts of oil and gas and are anisotropic because of fine-scale layering and the partial alignment of organic matter and anisotropic clay minerals with the bedding. Using extensive well log data acquired in the Midland Basin, the authors estimate and compare the elastic anisotropy in the Middle and Upper Wolfcamp Shale by combining data from a vertical pilot well with two lateral wells, one (6SM) drilled in the Middle Wolfcamp and one (6SU) drilled in the Upper Wolfcamp. An estimate of anisotropy is needed for seismic imaging and reservoir characterization and enables estimation of the 3D stress field acting within the formation. This is of interest for problems occurring during drilling, such as borehole instability, and during production, such as reservoir compaction. Other applications include the design of hydraulic fractures and the quantification of production-induced stresses, which, ultimately, may lead to rock failure.
Xin Shi (Physics/TcSUH) received the 2024 Goldsmid Award for Excellence in Research in Thermoelectrics by a Graduate Student from the International Thermoelectric Society. The award recognizes graduate work in theoretical, experimental, or device research in thermoelectrics. It carries a cash prize of $1,000 and a certificate. Shi, now a postdoctoral fellow at TcSUH, received his Ph.D. in Physics in May 2024. His advisor was Zhifeng Ren.
Madhan Tirumalai (Biology & Biochemistry) convened a session “Origins of Life: The Ribosomes as a Window to the Past” under the track “Transitions from Prebiotic Chemistry to Biology” at the Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) held in Providence, RI. The session featured four, 15-minute talks and a 30-minute panel discussion. The session examined the current understanding of the emergence of the proto-ribosome, and its evolution to its current form. Fifty people attended the session, including graduate students, postdoctoral, junior, and senior faculty members from various institutions.
Stephen Turner (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) co-authored “An Alternative to the Igneous Crust Fluid + Sediment Melt Paradigm for Arc Lava Geochemistry” in Science Advances with Charles Langmuir of Harvard University. This paper reassesses a commonly held ‘textbook’ model for the generation of volcanos associated with Earth’s subduction zones. The paradigmatic model involves the transfer of multiple types of material from the subducting plate into the overlying mantle, with an emphasis on ‘aqueous fluids.’ The authors outline several inconsistencies between this model and new experiments and measurements of volcanic rocks. Previous observations attributed to fluids are better accounted for by variations in the compositions of the marine sediment carried into the mantle on top of the sinking plate. They then use geochemical trace element and radiogenic isotope data to show that the available data are most consistent with a model of arc volcanism that involves widespread melt generation within the sinking plate itself.
Rakesh Verma (Computer Science, corresponding author), Dainis Boumber (Computer Science postdoctoral fellow, corresponding author), and Fatima Zahra Qachfar (Computer Science Ph.D. student) received third place and $500 for the Best Paper Award in the 2024 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining Blue Sky Track. Their paper was Blue Sky: Multilingual, Multimodal Domain Independent Deception Detection.
Julia Wellner (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) was part of an international research team that deployed an unmanned submersible, Ran, underneath 350-meter-thick ice. For 27 days, the submarine travelled over 1,000 kilometers back and forth under the glacier, reaching 17 kilometers into the cavity of the Dotson Ice Shelf, West Antarctica. The craft scanned the ice above it with advanced sonar. Researchers have previously used satellite data and ice cores to observe how ice shelves change over time. Using Ran, the team got back the very first detailed maps of the underside of a glacier, revealing clues to future sea level rise. The findings, which represent a huge progress in the understanding of Antarctica’s ice shelves, were published in Science Advances, “Swirls and scoops: Ice base melt revealed by multibeam imagery of an Antarctic ice shelf.” The imagery from the base of the Dotson Ice Shelf will help researchers interpret and calibrate the data seen from satellites. While some findings were as expected, they saw new patterns on the glacier base that raised questions. The base is not smooth, but there is a peak and valley ice-scape with plateaus and formations resembling sand dunes. They hypothesize these may have been formed by flowing water under the influence of Earth’s rotation.
Judy Wu (Chemistry, corresponding author), lead author postdoc Renan V. Viesser, Ph.D. student Clayton Donald, and Jeremy May (all Chemistry) published in Organic Letters. This work on the reactivity of twisted double bonds suggests that those with highly twisted bridgehead double bonds and a small singlet-triplet energy gap may undergo facile stepwise [2 + 2] cycloadditions to furnish four membered rings. A selection of reaction substrates, including ethylene, acetylene, perfluoroethylene, and cyclooctyne are considered.
Ding-Shyue (Jerry) Yang (Chemistry) received a 2024 Outreach Volunteer of the Year Award from the American Chemical Society. Yang, who manages the Chemistry Olympiad program in the Houston area, organizes and administers around 400 tests annually. He also administers the local awards on both a district level and school level to the top performers and supports the students advancing to the International Chemistry Olympiad. In 2023, Jerry assisted during the special Student Awards and Project SEED Dinner (for the first time since COVID) to recognize students that participate in ACS’ various outreach programs including Chemistry Olympiad.
Abdalla Zanouny (Biology & Biochemistry) has been selected by the National Association of Biology Teachers as the recipient of the 2024 Genetics Education Award. The award, sponsored by NABT and the Genetics Society of America, recognizes innovative, student-centered classroom instruction to promote the understanding of genetics and its impact on inheritance, health, and biological research. The honor includes a $500 honorarium, a recognition plaque to be presented at the NABT Professional Development Conference, and a one-year complimentary membership to NABT.
Shaun Zhang (Biology & Biochemistry, CNRCS) presented on the Center for Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling at the May UH Research Forum organized by the Division of Research.
Zhang became the chair of the Department of Biology & Biochemistry effective July 1.
UH Teaching Excellence Awards
- Donna Pattison (Biology & Biochemistry): Distinguished Leadership in Teaching Excellence, recognizing faculty who have made sustained and significant contributions to education within the context of their responsibilities as a full-time faculty member.
- Chin-Yo Lin (Biology & Biochemistry/CNRCS): Teaching Excellence Award recognizing outstanding achievements in teaching.
- Ann Cheek (Biology & Biochemistry) and Tai-Yen Chen (Chemistry): Teaching Excellence - Provost Core, given to faculty who have demonstrated outstanding teaching in undergraduate core curriculum courses.
- Cathy Poliak (Mathematics): Teaching Excellence - Instructor/Clinical, recognizing outstanding teaching by faculty instructors, clinical faculty, research faculty, artist affiliates and lecturers.
- Paige Evans, Jacqueline Ekeoba, Ramona Mateer, Rachel Glenn (teachHOUSTON/Mathematics): Teaching Excellence - Group Teaching, recognizing faculty who demonstrate a strong commitment to teaching and student success, who have worked together collaboratively to improve student outcomes.
- Jeremy May (Chemistry): Outstanding Graduate Mentor, recognizing a faculty member who has had outstanding success in mentoring graduate students.
- Melissa Zastrow (Chemistry): Undergraduate Research Mentor, acknowledging faculty who are making a significant impact in their field by supporting and mentoring undergraduate students in research and scholarship endeavors and who have demonstrated at least five years of mentorship involvement.
UH Awards for Excellence in Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity
- Gopal Pandurangan (Computer Science): Research Excellence - Professor, recognizing faculty who have a substantial continuing record of outstanding research, scholarship and creative activities.
- Weiyi Peng (Biology & Biochemistry/CNRCS): Research Excellence - Assistant Professor, recognizing faculty who have demonstrated great potential in research, scholarship and creative endeavors by virtue of the exceptional quality of their early contributions.