Edward Castillo

Computational and Applied Mathematics

Expected Graduation Year: 2006

Edward continued his research 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 researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Research Center.

Natalie Capiro

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Expected Year of Graduation: 2006

Natalie’s current research addresses the environmental implications associated with the use of ethanol as a fuel oxygenate 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, and 3) quantify the impact of ethanol spills on microbial processes and the effect of these processes on hydrocarbons in groundwater.

Juli Carrillo

Expected Year of Graduation: 2011

Juli is currently assessing the linkage between behavioral traits in the house fly, such as larval foraging, latency until copulation, and predator evasion. Additionally, she is analyzing the effects of sexual conflict within this system to determine the role of male harassment on female mate choice and offspring fitness.

Jamie Chatman

Expected Year of Graduation: 2007

During the 2005-2006 academic year, Jamie continued a research project studying the race, ethnic, and nativity differences in health. She completed a Meta-analysis on the Hispanic Paradox and infant mortality in collaboration with the sociology department.

Michael Contreras

Michael’s current research lies outside the bounds of “traditional” civil engineering design and testing. Basically, we apply specially designed neural network algorithms that have been tailored to civil engineering applications and train them so that they can “learn” what it is like to be a healthy system. The overall goal is that if damage occurs to a structure, the neural network will let us know that there is a problem, where the problem exists, and the extent of the problem.

Marvin Cummins

Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science

Expected Year of Graduation: 2008

Marvin is currently bringing up an evaporation system that will be used to develop ultra-thin film materials for Smartcard applications. This system will also be used to develop heat-activated ultra-thin film Shape-Memory Alloy materials for bio-medical applications.

Nikki Delk

Biochemistry & Cell Biology

Received Ph.D. in 2006

Nikki Delk graduated with a Ph.D. from the biochemistry and cell Biology Department in May 2006. The title of her thesis is "The Regulation and Function of CML23 and CML24: Arabidopsis thaliana Genes Encoding Ca2+-Binding Proteins Implicated in Abscisic Acid Response, Floral Transition, and Ion Homeostasis." Nikki used molecular biology techniques to analyze plant response to various environmental and developmental growth conditions in order to determine the role of two homologous calcium-binding proteins in these processes.

Chantal Edwards

Computational and Applied Mathematics

Expected Year of Graduation: 2009

Chantal Edwards is a student in the Computational and Applied Mathematics Department at Rice. She is working with Dr. Yin Zhang in an area of research involving digital signal processing and conic/linear programming. Currently, she is finishing her master's thesis on alternating projection algorithms for conic programming.

Hector Flores

Statistics

Expected Year of Graduation: 2007

Hector’s research involved network tomography, mobility models, traffic modeling, exploratory data analysis of massive data.

Philip Graves

Biochemistry & Cell Biology

Expected Year of Graduation: 2007

Hemoglobin is responsible for the transport of oxygen throughout the body and, in extracellular form, is being used to develop O2 delivery pharmaceuticals for use as a blood substitute. The challenge of low rHb production yield when over-expressed in E. Coli can be addressed by the rational design to increase stability of recombinant human apohemoglobin (rHb) by using the ultra-stable sperm whale hemoglobin as a model. With the reduction of rHb degradation and the increase of the heme prosthetic group readily available for incorporation to apohemoglobin, higher production and yield of recombinant human hemoglobin can be achieved.

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.

Joel Huegel

Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science

Expected Year of Graduation: 2009

As a member of the Mechatronics and Haptic Interfaces Lab (MAHI) Joel’s primary interest is in human-robot shared control in a collaborative haptic environments for training and rehabilitation. During the 2005-2006 school year, Joel continued work and completed a haptic device for forearm and wrist hemiparetic stroke rehabilitation. Future work will look at using several different haptic devices to study motor learning factors in an expert-novice training scenario.

Marcos Huerta

Physics and Astronomy

Expected Year of Graduation: 2006

Marcos’s researched involved a radial velocity survey of T Tauri stars to find low mass companions.

Jennifer Jamison

Chemistry

Expected Year of Graduation: 2007

Jennifer's research focus is using analytical ultracentrifugation (AU) to characterize diverse dispersed-phase nanomaterials. Specifically, she is investigating and optimizing AU as it is applied to cadmium selenide and iron oxide nanoparticles in organic solvents. Additionally, she is using AU to quantify the relative ratios of protein to gold nanoparticles in nanobioconjugates.

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 . These experimental studies are especially important in fundamentally understanding strontium.

Aaron  Martinez

Chemistry

Received his Ph.D. in 2006

Aaron’s research was 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 approach to Lactonamycin and its related polyketides has been developed, in two particular 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 which 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 and Astronomy

Expected Year of Graduation: 2006

In 2002 Vance Henize put forth a forward-modeling technique to take advantage of this data. Aramis’ work has focused on investigating improving the technique’s output in two way. He switched to the Tsyganenko 2004 stormtime magnetic field model, improving the quality of the inputs to the algorithm and he corrected a number of logic errors that allowed unphysical computations in parts of the algorithm, increasing the reliability of the results. The final part of the project will be to complete the statistical analysis of the generated electron density data, including comparing it to independently-derived in situ density data.

Naxhiely Martinez

Biochemistry and Cell Biology

Expected Year of Graduation: 2009

Peroxisomes are single membrane bound organelles that function to compartmentalize certain metabolic reactions, particularly those resulting in hydrogen peroxide production. In plants, peroxisomes are the primary site of fatty acid ß-oxidation. We are studying peroxisomal processes in Arabidopsis thaliana, with a focus on the conversion of the endogenous auxin indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) to indole-3-acetic acid (IAA). Both IBA and IAA promote lateral root formation and inhibit root elongation. IBA appears to be converted to IAA in a process similar to fatty acid ß-oxidation. We are using a forward genetics approach to identify proteins necessary for the conversion of IBA to IAA by screening for mutant plants resistant to IBA. IBA-response (ibr) mutants display enhanced root elongation compared to wild type on IBA, but respond normally to IAA. A subset of these mutants ß-oxidize fatty acids respond normally, indicating normal peroxisomal biogenesis and import. However, many ibr mutants are defective in peroxisomal processes, consistent with the hypothesis that IBA is ß-oxidized in peroxisomes. We are using heterologous expression and enzyme assays to characterize the proteins defective in this group of ibr mutants. This research will help us to elucidate one of the complex mechanisms that plants utilize to control auxin levels.

Jarret Mathwig

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Expected Year of Graduation: 2008

Jarret’s research is on the optimal collision avoidance trajectory for an aircraft in abort landing.

Travis McPhail

Computer Science

Expected Year of Graduation: 2009

During the 2005-06 school year, Travis worked in several areas. Along with a group of students, he developed a stock market simulator for an investment company (HBK) based in New York/Dallas. It integrates with their existing systems and allows for seamless transactions with actual financial institutions. He also researched deformation techniques for different classes of objects. This research included deformations of cylindrical shapes (snakes, etc.) using cubic b-spline. This also included point and line based deformations for 2D images and 3D meshes which will be presented at SIGGRAPH 2006. He developed a system for rapid prototyping of card games. He is currently working on developing a system that will take CT scans of human chest cavities and extract smooth 3D models of the lungs and the lobes of the lungs automatically. This system will also automatically calculate ventillation of lungs and register lungs from different patients to one another. This will allow doctors to plan cancer treatment more effectively.

Josue Noyola-Martinez

Statistics

Expected Year of Graduation: 2007

Josue is a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Statistics. This year he worked with Dr. Dennis D. Cox to try and find a better way to find error estimates between two methods (SSA and tau-leap) of doing stochastic simulation for chemical reaction systems. Josue also worked with Dr. Guerrero of the Department of Radiation Oncology, MD Anderson Cancer Center. Josue and Dr. Guerrero analyzed data from a case-control study that looked at the behavior lung capacity of mice that were ventilated after radiation treatment.

Sheila Moore

Bioengineering

Expected Year of Graduation: 2008

Sheila’s 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: 2008

In Joanna’research, she wishes to provide a plausible explanation of why the BFGS Method is the preferred secant update method for unconstrained optimization. She is currently writing her thesis on the historical development of the BFGS Secant Method including some of its uniqueness properties and previous characterizations. She wants to 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: 2009

Gracie’s research involves studying carbon nanotube nanocomposites, focusing on the synergistic effect of carbon nanofibers and nanotubes in the mechanical and electrical properties of epoxy/carbon fiber composites. This work will allow creating new multifunctional materials that can be used in multiple engineering applications.

Alena Scott

Statistics

Received her Ph.D. in 2006

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 means: 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

Received her Ph.D. in 2006

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.

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.

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 master’s degree in mathematics.

Joseph Young

Computational & Applied Mathematics

Expected Year of Graduation: 2008

Joseph's research focuses on developing tools and solvers to solve mathematical programming problems. He has recently worked on developing high performance codes for different kinds of convex programs such as semidefinite programming.

Fernando Zumbado

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Expected Year of Graduation: 2007

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.