People, papers and presentations

John Anderson, the W. Maurice Ewing Professor in Oceanography at Rice, participated in an Oct. 10 panel discussion at the Texas Capitol in Austin with leading scientists from top Texas universities to discuss climate change research. The panel focused on the impact of climate change in Texas and the need for swift action to address carbon pollution, a major contributing factor. The panel was led by U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). 

Christina Lacerenza, a psychology graduate student, has been selected by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology to receive the Leslie W. Joyce and Paul W. Thayer Graduate Fellowship. The $10,000 fellowship is designed to provide financial support to a doctoral student in industrial and organizational psychology who is specializing in training and development and/or selection and placement.

Rice bioengineer Antonios Mikos has been named winner of the Biomedical Engineering Society’s 2017 Shu Chien Achievement Award, which is given for “groundbreaking scientific advances in the field of cell and molecular bioengineering, the development of programs to support this emerging field and the mentoring and training of the next generation of scientists working in our field.” Mikos is the Louis Calder Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and a professor of chemistry and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice. He is the director of the J.W. Cox Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering and of the Center for Excellence in Tissue Engineering. His lab in Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative specializes in the synthesis, processing and evaluation of new biomaterials for use as scaffolds for tissue engineering, as nonviral vectors for gene therapy and as carriers for controlled drug delivery. Mikos will receive the award at the society’s annual conference in Hawaii in January.