Raquel Adham

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Bonnie Bartel

Raquel continued her work concerning the genetic analysis of indole-3-butyric acid response mutants in Arabidopsis plants. This project would serve as a model system for higher plants.

Edith Aguirre

El Paso, TX

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Edith investigated the computational methods used by calculators to perform certain functions. In collaboration with Dr. Tapia, Edith plans to finish a publishable technical report on her work.

Joyce Almaguer-Reisdorf

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Paul Harcombe and Dr. Arthur Few

Joyce, a graduate student at Rice University, explored the effects of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Specifically, she evaluated the biomass of southeast Texas in order to determine optimal levels of carbon dioxide consumption by pine forests.

Carlos Alvarez

Brownsville, TX

Advisor: Dr. Satish Nagarajaiah

In pursuit of his degree in civil engineering, Carlos studied the effects of seismic isolation on suspension systems of buildings and cars. Carlos, partnered with an undergraduate from Cornell, constructed a model office building.

Ebonii Anderson

Beaumont, TX

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Ebonii's work entitled "Fair Lane Assignment in BMX Racing" is a mathematical problem used to determine the most fair method of assigning lanes to racers in series events. She was interested in the AGEP Program because it provided an opportunity for her to interact with a diverse group of underrepresented minorities.

Fenwick Broyard

New Orleans, LA

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Fenwick received his undergraduate degree from Xavier University. He spent this summer preparing for his first year of graduate work at Rice University.

Natalie Capiro

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Phil Bedient

A graduate student in the Environmental Science and Engineering Department at Rice University, Natalie's project involved low-volume pulsed biosparging of hydrogen for bioremediation of chlorinated solvents.

Edward Castillo

San Antonio, TX

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Edward prepared for his first semester in the Computational and Applied Mathematics Department at Rice University. He was interested in meeting other minority students pursuing a Ph.D. and in getting a head start on graduate study at Rice.

Erica Corral

El Paso, TX

Advisor: Dr. Enrique Barrera

Last summer, Erica worked with processing silicon nitride / SWNT composites. This year, she continued her research and prepared for her Ph.D. qualifying exam in the field of materials science.

Jessica Corral

El Paso, TX

Advisor: Dr. Enrique Barrera

Through the AGEP Program, Jessica was able to collaborate with a professor at Rice Univeristy and with doctors at NASA. Her work this summer focused on the thermal conductivity ratios of many different elements. Working directly with professionals at NASA was an invaluable experience for Jessica.

Nikki Delk

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Janet Braam

Nikki was involved in a research project to identify TCH2 mutants and to analyze and define the phynological function of TCH2 in Arabidopsis thaliana using a model system. Nikki is in pursuit of a Ph.D. in biochemistry and cell biology.

Vernon Evans

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Peter Varman

Vernon is an undergraduate in the Electrical Engineering Department at Rice University specializing in computer engineering. He says that the AGEP Program gave him the opportunity to see what graduate school is like through work with a graduate student mentor. His project dealt with the optimization in scheduling for parallel disks of video servers.

Musie Ghebremichael

Eritrea Africa

Advisor: Dr. Gary Rosner

Musie has attended many schools throughout the world, and he came to Rice University to acquire his Ph.D. in statistics. The AGEP Program was particularly attractive to Musie because it was more diverisified and made him feel "at home."

Romer Gil

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Alan Cox

Romer spent the summer evaluating the effects of dynamic content caching in bulletin board websites. Essentially, Romer took a bulletin board site, some caching schemes for dynamic content, and evaluated performance improvement from the sit without cache to the site with cache.

Nancy Glenn

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. David Scott

Nancy's research project was to construct a statistical procedure for graphing confidence intervals that are insensitive to outliers. This project also coincided with Nancy's dissertation, which was based upon a proposal she had completed the previous summer.

Victoria Gomez

Galveston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Lon Wilson

Victoria's research was dedicated to discovering a better MRI contrast agent using the Carbon 60 "buckyball." Ultimately, she hopes to create an efficient paramagnetic MRI contrast agent for use in the biomedical field.

Carlos Gonzalez

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Enrique Barrera

Carlos is pursuing degrees in chemistry and French. Through the AGEP Program, he was able to build friendships with students outside of Rice University who offered him advice and support.

Edward Gonzalez

Berkeley, CA

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Edward came to Rice University after receiving his undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley. He worked in tandem with Ebonii Anderson on a mathematical problem modeling BMX racing.

Gerrick Green

Houston, TX

Advisor: Drs. Dimitrios Demopoulos , Devika Subramanian, and Moshe Vardi

This summer, Gerrick and his advisors researched the structure of complexity in solving random graphs. Through data analysis, he was able to bring factual evidence to problems that had previously only theoretical answers.

Marcos Huerta

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Patrick Hartigan

Marcos, a graduate student in the Astrophysics Department at Rice University, investigated the spectra of radioactive shocks in order to gain a better understanding of the accuracy of our current shock models.

Elizabeth Ibazebo

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Devika Subramanian

Elizabeth's research revolved around a Naval Research Laboratories Task Learning Exercise Program that evaluated submarine pilots navigational performance. The goal of her research was to engineer an artificially intelligent agent that could learn to navigate autonomously. Her experience opened her eyes to the worlds of graduate school, research, presentations, and mentoring.

Diane Jamrog

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Yin Zhang

Diane has participated in the Rice Summer Program for the past four years because it is an excellent opportunity for her to continue her Ph.D. research and interact in the unique social environment created by the diversity of the participants.

Nicole Kelm

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Enrique Barrera

Nicole studyied the effects of cyclic and dynamic loading on cartilage, which involves testing multiple bovine cartilage specimen in tension, gathering data, and modeling this data to determine the hystereiss parameter of articular cartilage used to determine the general condition and health of cartilage.

Sabrina Macedo-Moran

Ithaca, NY

Advisor: Dr. Satish Nagarajaiah

Sabrina worked with Rice University undergraduate student Carlos Alvarez on seismic response reduction with smart dampers. Together they studied ways to reduce vibrations in structures during earthquakes through isolation and MR Dampers.

Jarret Mathwig

Stafford, TX

Advisor: Dr. Angelo Miele

Jarret developed a program that solves a series of differential equations in vector form and give an optimal solution. The main objective of the program is for Jarret to gain familiarity with differential equations.

Sheila Moore

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Jennifer West

An undergraduate student from Syracuse University, Sheila worked to determine whether smooth muscle cells adhere to an adhesion peptide RGDS. She worked under Dr. Wu writing a computer program to compare proteins.

Amanda Mosola

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. John Anderson

Amanda is a graduate student in pursuit of a Ph.D. in Geology. Her summer research has been a continuation of her dissertation research concerned with the movement of Antarctic Ice Sheets. She was able to read these shifts using bottom surface imaging data.

Karen Nunez-Wallace

Lake Mary, FL

Advisor: Dr. Bonnie Bartel

Over the summer, Karen engaged in researching the hormone auxin in Arabidopsis thaliana. More importantly, her work focused on the two chemicals 1BA and 1AA and their effects on root elongation. Karen is an undergraduate at Rice University.

Alena Oetting

Midland, TX

Advisor: Dr. David Scott

Alena has been a member of the AGEP family for three years. As a statistician, Alena has studied some parametric methods of estimating density functions. The reduction of these functions complexity was significant to her research this summer.

Naomi Reed

Missouri City, TX

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Naomi worked with Dr. Tapia on a mathematical problem dealing with calculators. The central question to their investigation was "How calculators compute certain functions?." She also created a technical draft of their results to later be published.

LaKeisha Robertson

Converse, TX

Advisor: Dr. Mike Gustin

LaKeisha is a track star and biology major at Rice University. Her work this summer focused on gene deletion and the effect certain deletions have on fungus. If gene sequences are modifiable in this manner, they might be used to develop drugs to aid people afflicted by this fungus.

Juan Rodriguez

Garland, TX

Advisor: Dr. Dave McStravick

Juan conducted original research on optimizing weight distribution for the mini Baja car that a group of mechanical engineers work on throughout the year at Rice University. The problem with the current car was the center of mass which prevented it from climbing steep hills during races.

Josef Sifuentes

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Marek Behr

As an undergraduate student at Rice University, Josef exhibits a wide variety of interests ranging from art to science and engineering. In the AGEP Summer Program, he studied computational fluid dynamics in the area of submarine and other marine applications.

Kimberly Smith

New Orleans, LA

Advisor: Dr. Marjorie Corcoran

In the AGEP Summer Program, Kimberly researched some analysis of particles and conservation violations that included searching for a violation of lepton flavoring conservation. In basic terms, she studied violations of decaying particles in a beam accelerator.

Pablo Tarazaga

Mayaguez, Puerto Rico

Advisor: Dr. Fathi Ghorbel

Pablo started a new area of research called Heart Rate Variability (HRV). He engaged in intense study of how the heart and electrocardiograms work. Most important was his research in the analysis of HRV in the time-domain and the frequency-domain.

Victor Udoewa

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Tayfun Tezduyar

Victor received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and came to Rice Uiversity to study fluid and solid mechanics. For the past two summers, Victor computed the flow around falling objects such as cargo exiting a plane or a jumping paratrooper.

Jerry Vera

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Enrique Barrera

Jerry's research involved the effects of radiation like that found in space, using nanotube systems and composites. His work was part of a collaborative effort between NASA, Rice University, and Prairie View A&M University.

Daniel Verduzco

Sugarland, TX

Advisor: Dr. Sue Gibson

A returning participant from last summer, Daniel spent this summer mapping a mutant gene in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. This research was a continuation of the project that he started last summer.

Rachel Vincent

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Dan Sorenson

The AGEP Program provided Rachel with the opportunity to mentor math, science, and engineering undergraduates from minority groups. Her familiarity with the program allowed her to act as a mentor while continuing her Ph.D. research from previous years.

Shaina Whitworth

Durham, NC

Advisor: Dr. Mary Ellen Lane

Shaina participated in multiple projects this summer. First, she attempted to clone three genes but the experiments failed because they were not expressed in the cDNA they were using. Then she built a transgenic construct that would allow for visual detection of protein synthesis. This project was more successful.

Donald Williams

Dallas, TX

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Donald's work focused on a component of his thesis research. Specifically, Donald modeled volatility as a stochastic variable in American pricing options in order to eventually more accurately price American options.

Powtawche Williams

New Orleans, LA

Advisor: Dr. Angelo Miele

Powtawche is a graduate student at Rice University in pursuit of a Ph.D. in the field of aerospace engineering. Her research investigated ion population as a system of interplanetary travel. Also, she spent time preparing for her mechanical engineering cumulative exam at the end of the summer.

Michael Josue Zapata

San Antonio, TX

Advisor: Dr. Andrew Meade

Michael is an undergraduate student from Rice University in the Mechanical Engineering Department. His summer research concerned the exploration of neural networks for the implementation of intelligent data systems.