Anthony Castanares

Computer Science

Expected Graduation Year: 2008

Anthony’s research focuses on multi-stage programming languages, and their applications. He is also interested in adding staging constructs to imperative languages, such as C#.

Edward Castillo

Computational and Applied Mathematics

Expected Graduation Year: 2006

Edward’s research is in the field of medical image registration. The goal is to find an “optimal” point-to-point correspondance between a sequence of 3-Dimensional CT (computerized tomography) images. The work is in collaboration with resarchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Research Center.

Natalie Capiro

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Expected Graduation Year: 2006

Natalie’s current research addresses the environmental implications associated with the use of ethanol additive fuels as oxygenates in gasoline. The purpose of her work is to simulate spill scenarios that are likely to occur in the field within a controlled pilot-scale system. The main research objectives are to: 1) quantify generation of concentrations of ethanol and hydrocarbons in groundwater near the source, 2) quantify the migration of trapped NAPL as well as NAPL generated from fuel-grade ethanol, 3) quantify the impact of ethanol spills on microbial processes and the effect of these processes on hydrocarbons in groundwater, and 4) model the potential impacts of varying concentrations of ethanol addition on microbial catabolic potential.

Erica Corral

Received Ph.D. in 2005

Erica’s research is on single-walled carbon nantoube reinforced silicon nitride ceramic composites. She specifically looks at advanced multifunctional ceramic nanocomposites with tailored mechanical, thermal and electrical properties.

Kalatu Davies

During her time at Rice, Kalatu has been focusing on Decision theory as her primary area of focus in the Statistics Department. Decision theory is a tool used in a variety of settings to determine an optimal course of action, under conditions of uncertainty. Given a probability function and a loss function, which defines the relationship between the possible actions and the true state of nature, she wanted to determine an optimal decision rule. Medical practitioners would like to use this same type of methodology to determine optimal treatments for patients, but a few questions arose such as: How do we define losses in the medical setting? How do we place a monetary value on human life, and which perspective do we take? To deal with these issues she, along with her advisor, developed an alternative approach called Inverse Decision Theory. Given a probability model and a decision rule, they first determine the set of losses under which it is optimal. Working under a Bayesian paradigm, which allows them to incorporate information that they already know about the true state of nature and deal with uncertainty in our model, they characterized the patient loss space by finding the region of optimality for each decision rule of interest. Although there are other methods which compare patient risks and benefits of alternative treatments, none of these formally quantify patient losses. They believe that they have developed a method which allows them to formally quantify patient experiences and outcomes, and will be applicable to many disease states, and serve as a guide tool for determining optimal medical treatment decisions.

Nikki Delk

Biochemistry and Cell Biology

Expected Year of Graduation: 2005

Plants are immobile and therefore must be able to respond and adapt to changes in the environment. Calcium is an important signaling molecule that mediates plant response to the environment by affecting intracellular processes, such as gene expression and ion transport. Nikki’s research is focused on determining the expression patterns and physiological function of two related Arabidopsis proteins, CML23 and CML24, which may function in plant response to the environment in a calcium-dependent manner.

Kary Green

Computational and Applied Mathematics

Expected Year of Graduation: 2007

Kary’s current research project is in optimal sensor placement for parameter identification. This research attempts to answer the question of how to optimally locate sensors in a 2D spatial domain so that measurements taken at these locations provide the most accurate estimation of the parameters of a system. These parameters are unknown and are embedded in the partial differential equation describing the system. Kary completed his undergraduate studies at Henderson State University where he majored in mathematics and minored in physics. He also holds a Masters degree in mathematics from the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville.

Jennifer Jamison

Chemistry

Expected Year of Graduation: 2007

Jennifer’s research has been focusing on a way to characterize solutions of nanoparticles and nanobioconjugates, or nanoparticles with biomolecules attached. In developing various nanomaterials, characterization is very important when adapting them for specific uses. Previously, gel electrophoresis was utilized, but the nanoparticles themselves could not be identified. In addition, the most common method employed to image nanoparticle systems is transmission electron microscopy (TEM); however, it cannot be used to image biomolecules. Further, samples must be dried before they are imaged in TEM, and upon drying, the nanoparticles aggregate to some extent and the image obtained is not the true state of the solution. Alternatively, she proposed analytical ultracentrifugation (AU) as a method to characterize nanosystems in solution. AU measures the rate at which a solution component traverses through a given distance. These components travel quickly if their mass and density are large, or slowly if the mass and density are low, allowing the determination of various solution components. Results indicate that AU detected gold nanoparticles with different sizes in agreement with TEM, and that it also determined how aggregated or stable the sample was. AU also differentiated between bare gold nanoparticles and nanobioconjugates. Initial success with gold nanoparticles prompted further investigation into using AU to characterize nanoparticles. She has recently applied AU to organic-phase cadmium selenide nanoparticles, and although the initial results were mixed and further research is needed, she is confident that AU is a good method for the characterization of nanoparticles.

Yenny Martinez

Physics and Astronomy

Expected Year of Graduation: 2008

Yenny’s experimental research topic is laser cooling and trapping of neutral strontium - photoassociative spectroscopy, ultracold collisions and evaporative cooling toward bose-einstein condensation (these also include long-term goals). Her research deals with using lasers and magnetic fields to manipulate atoms. By slowing down atoms that have velocities near 300 meters per second down to velocities that correspond to temperatures a million times colder than room temperatures. Their manipulation becomes easier after the atoms are this cold. These experimental studies are especially important in fundamentally understanding strontium.

Aaron  Martinez

Chemistry

Expected Year of Graduation: 2006

Aaron’s research is towards the synthesis of Lactonamycin and related polyketides. Lactonamycin exhibits a variety of potentially valuable biological activities. Among these, are the sub microgram/mL minimum inhibitory concentrations seen against Gram-positive bacteria. Perhaps the most notable biological activity of lactonamycin is its inhibition of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE). An appraoch to Lactonamycin and its related polyketides has been developed, in particular two methodologies: 1) the Tandem Conjugate Addition-Dieckmann Condensation and 2) the Quinone Nitrile-Oxide Cycloaddition that have allowed for a unified approach to this class of biologically active natural products. His research entails a plan and progress toward Lactonamycin that will allow for the synthesis of a unique substrate where these novel methodologies may be utilized so as to complete the synthesis of Lactonamycin.

Aramis Martinez

Physics

Expected Year of Graduation: 2009

Aramis’ research focuses on the region of the solar system around the earth is dominated by earth’s magnetic field, a region called the magnetosphere. His work involves explaining the asymptotic character of the electron density height profile in the polar cap, as determined by Vance Henize using a statistical analysis of data form the Radio Plasma Imager on the NASA’s IMAGE satellite.

Naxhiely Martinez

Biochemistry and Cell Biology

Expected Year of Graduation: 2009

This is Naxhiely’s first year at Rice. She graduated in May of 2004 with a B.S. in chemistry and a B.A. in biology from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, TX. She is still in the process of rotating through labs so she has not yet decided what her research will be for the next five years.

Jarret Mathwig

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Expected Year of Graduation: 2007

Jarret’s research is on the optimization of lunar and Martian trajectories using the Sequential Gradient Restoration algorithm.

Josue Noyola-Martinez

Statistics

Expected Year of Graduation: 2007

Josue works with Dr. Rudy Guerra on several projects. Recently, their group completed final drafts of two papers presented at the 2004 Critical Assessment of Microarray Analysis (CAMDA) conference, one of which won first place in the competition. This work involves exploration of time series microarray data for the organism responsible for Malaria, Plasmodium falciparum. Please visit http://www.camda.duke.edu for more information. Currently, he is also working on two other projects: The first deals with the processing and analysis of CT scan images from patients of lung cancer. Presently, it is necessary that doctors identify and outline lung tumor location and size by scrolling through a set of CT images one by one; this is a tedious and expensive method. It is the goal of researchers, from MD Anderson Dr. Thomas Guerrero and Drs. Richard Tapia and Rudy Guerra from the CAAM and Statistics departments here at Rice, to improve upon existing Optical Flow Methods to be able to facilitate tumor contouring and to determine evaluation methods for optical flow using more sophisticated statistical models.

The second project deals with microarray data from patients with Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC). RCC or clear cell RCC, affects about 30,000 people a year and one in three will not survive the illness. Using tissue samples from tumors at various stages of development, they are hoping to find genes linked with this disease.

Sheila Moore

Bioengineering

Expected Year of Graduation: 2008

Sheila’s proposed research concerns cartilage regeneration using a biodegradable scaffold.

Paul Ontiveros

Physics

Expected Year of Graduation: 2008

Paul Ontiveros is involved in researching the physics of Earth’s magnetosphere. The primary focus is on the development of a computational model that represents the global electric and magnetic fields within the magnetosphere. This work will ultimately be added to the Rice Field Model, a field model that has seen over two decades of evolution at Rice.

Joanna Papakonstantinou

Computational and Applied Mathematics

Expected Year of Graduation: 2006

Joanna is currently compiling a complete historical development of the BFGS Secant method including its uniqueness properties and a complete history of previous characterizations. She will provide a plausible explanation of why BFGS is the preferred secant update for unconstrained optimization. She will then derive a new characterization that demonstrates an interesting robustness property of the BFGS secant method that may explain its superior behavior.

John-David Rocha

Chemistry

Expected Year of Graduation: 2007

John-David is currently designing and implementing instrumentation for real-time fluorimetric analysis of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT). His fundamental research in the area of SWNT spectroscopy will enable improved methods for process/quality control as well as the ability to utilize SWNT in various biological applications.

Grace Rojas

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Expected Year of Graduation: 2008

At this time Grace is preparing for her qualifying exams. Next semster she will begin working on her research project with Dr. Barrera's group in the MEMS department. The intention of her research is to study thermally conductive fibers made from polymer/nanotube composites. Nanotubes are known to be some of the most thermally conductive materials available and their potential is only beginning to be explored. By adding small amounts of nanotubes in a polymer the resulting thermal conductivity of the composite is greatly enhanced, opening a window for new applications in the thermal management field.

Alena Scott

Statistics

Expected Year of Graduation: 2005

Wavelet methodology has demonstrated great success in many arenas, but Alena focuses on problems of estimating signals contaminated by noise. A common feature of these problems is the replacement of the raw wavelet coefficients by “smoother” estimates. Typically, some wavelet coefficients are set to zero, i.e. thresholded, while many others are shrunk towards zero. While many wavelet shrinkage techniques assume independence of the wavelet coefficients, empirical evidence suggests that the coefficients are in fact not independent. Therefore, Alena believes that a good thresholding algorithm should take this dependence into account. In addition to capturing the correlation between the coefficients, the threshold level should also depend upon the complexity of the signal being modeled and the level of noise in the sampled signal. Her research is to find an adaptive threshold using a new technique in density estimation, L2E. By adaptive, she mean: 1) the algorithm should be automatic and data based and 2) the algorithm should find the best threshold given a particular w, the percentage of the signal that is noise. An estimate for w can be found through partial density estimation with L2E. Using L2E to construct multivariate density estimates for the noise components, she will also attempt to capture the information on intra-scale dependencies.

Lakeisha Taite

Bioengineering

Expected Year of Graduation: 2005

Lakeshia’s research primarily focuses on the uses of nitric oxide. Nitric oxide (NO) has several biological functions that make it a candidate therapeutic for a range of diverse disease states. Materials that release NO in a localized and controlled manner may also be an important investigative tool to study the effects of NO on cells and tissues. Lakeshia and her research team have successfully synthesized copolymers of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) that have been shown to release NO over a number of different time frames. These materials have shown efficacy in inhibiting some of the major contributors to the restenosis cascade. Dendrimers, highly branched nanoparticles, have also been designed to release NO over varying periods and offer the ability to design injectable, targeted therapeutics. They also sought to improve the performance of synthetic small diameter vascular grafts by incorporating a NO-releasing diazeniumdiolate segment into the main chain of a polyurethane. These bioactive polymers may have applications in further analysis of the effects of NO in biological systems and may prove beneficial as drug delivery systems in numerous applications, such as prevention of restenosis after balloon angioplasty, promotion of dermal healing, or as candidate materials for arterial substitutes.

Jesse Turner

Computational and Applied Mathematics

Expected Year of Graduation: 2007

Jesse’s research involves the time dependent behavior of a chemical system in a cellular environment. There are several mathematical models for predicting the time trajectories of chemical concentrations. However, the effectiveness of each model depends on the system under examination. Therefore, hybrid models have arisen that provide the optimal match of models and molecular species.

Victor Udoewa

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Received Ph.D. in 2005

Victor’s work researches the trajectory and safety of separating objects, particularly those separating from cargo aircraft. He uses finite element formulations to solve Navier-Stokes equations governing the 3-D fluid dynamics around complex bodies such as a paratrooper jumping from an aircraft. When such paratroopers simultaneously jump from opposite doors on the same craft, their paths cross below (crossover). Using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) his aim is to determine the cause and design geometry changes that will beneficially affect the airflow and, hence, the paths while predicting accurate landing locations based on trajectory.

Jerry Vera

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Expected Year of Graduation: 2008

Jerry is currently working on a project underway at the NASA Johnson Space Center’s Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory (ASPL) called Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR). The VASIMR is a new type of rocket which uses electrical power to ionize a gas into a plasma and then confines and ejects this plasma into space using a series of superconducting magnets. The VASIMR engine has great promise in the field of long term space exploration as its main benefits include a tenfold increase in rocket efficiency compared to those of a chemical rockets, lower fuel requirements for spacecraft, and shorter trip time for distant missions. Jerry’s research involves analyzing and predicting the heat output during ionization and cyclotron heating. His advisor is Dr. Yildiz Bayazitoglu.

Dwayne Williams

Computational and Applied Mathematics

Expected Year of Graduation: 2007

Dwayne is currently studying unconstrained optimization algorithms that allow the use of inexact function and gradient values. The optimizaiton algorithms adjust the level of inexactness allowed in the objective and gradient functions based on the observed progress of the algorithm. These algorithms or applicable to simulation driven optimization, inverse problems, and parameter identification.

Talithia Williams

Statistics

Expected Year of Graduation: 2006

Talithia's research looks at developing spatial and temporal flood prediction models for Houston area bayous. She is a 2000 graduate of Spelman College with a major in mathematics and minor in physics and a 2002 graduate of Howard University with a masters in mathematics.

Powtawche Williams

Mechanical Engineering and MaterialsScience

Received Ph.D. in 2005

Powtawche works under the supervision of Dr. Angelo Miele in the Aero-Astronautics Group. Her research relates to the optimization of interplanetary trajectories using electric propulsion. Specifically, trajectories are generated with the sequential gradient-restoration algorithm to minimize time and propellant consumption while controlling thrust direction and magnitude. Currently, her research involves interplanetary flight from Earth to Mars. Additional trajectory studies will include the utilization of a hybrid propulsion system, that is, the combination of high-thrust chemical engines for planetary flight and low-thrust electrical engines for interplanetary flight.

Fernando Zumbado

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Expected Year of Graduation: 2005

Fernando’s current research consists of implementing existing algorithms, that mitigate instability introduced by time delay in communication, to a kinematically dissimilar master/slave pair. In addition, he is attempting to overcome the problem of variable time delay by placing a forward observer in the feedforward loop.