People, papers and presentations

Erin Baumgartner, associate director of the Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC), was a keynote speaker at the Neuhaus Education Center’s 2019 Unlocking Literacy Conference Oct. 10. Baumgartner’s presentation focused on school readiness, racial and ethnic disparities, and student achievement in early education. The center’s mission is to promote reading success by providing evidence-based professional learning to educators, information and resources to parents, and direct services to adult learners.

Ruth López Turley, director of HERC, will serve as a reviewer for the upcoming MacArthur Foundation Lever for Change Economic Opportunity Challenge, which will award a $10 million grant to improve financial viability for low-income individuals across the United States.

Graduate student Morgan Barnes won the “best student lecture” award and a cash prize for her presentation, “Reactive 3D-printing of liquid crystal elastomers for non-linear actuation,” at the International Liquid Crystal Elastomer Conference in Eindhoven, Netherlands, in September. Barnes is a graduate student in the Rice lab of Rafael Verduzco, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of materials science and nanoengineering. The work was supported by the Army Research Office Chemical Sciences Division.

The Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) awarded Rebecca Richards-Kortum the Oct. 17 plenary National Institutes of Health (NIH)-National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) Lecture at its annual meeting in Philadelphia. The lecture recognizes outstanding work in the field. BMES is a 7,500-member professional society that promotes and enhances knowledge and education in biomedical engineering and bioengineering worldwide.