Leticia Benitez

El Paso, TX

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Leticia spent her summer studying and preparing for her qualifying exams and tutoring a local high school student in Mathematics. She also served as a mentor to one of the first year students in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics.

Carla Bossano

Advisor: Dr. Antonios Mikos

Carla is a bioengineering undergraduate major at Rice. This summer she worked on an in vitro study investigating the culture of bone cells on a starch-based scaffold under high or low flow conditions. Specifically, she looked at growth factors commonly associated with bone formation using immunohistochemical techniques.

Natalie Capiro

Advisor: Dr. Phil Bedient

Natalie is a Ph.D. student in the Civil and Environmental Department at Rice University. She spent the summer investigated the fate and transport of the ethanol blended gasoline in the subsurface this summer. She also began preparing for her qualifier examinations.

Edward Castillo

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Edward Castillo is a third year graduate student in the Computational and Applied Mathematics Department. He worked on numerical methods for medical image registration, lung images in particular.

Jamie Chatman

Advisor: Dr. Kathy Ensor

Jamie is an incoming student from Spellman College who spent her summer working on a project entitled ?Mean Residual Life? with two undergraduate students, Angelita Denny, and Jerome Taylor. She worked with Dr. Katherine Donato of the sociology department researching racial and nativity differences in asthma among children. The research is an exploration of the phenomenon that Mexican children living in the US, who are as a group socio-economically disadvantaged have much lower rates of asthma than other racial groups. Along with the phenomenon that recently arrived immigrant children, who also as a group tend to be disadvantaged, have lower rates of asthma, but the rate increases the longer they are in the US.

Erica Corral

Advisor: Dr. Enrique Barrera

Erica Corral is a graduate student in the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science department. Her summer research project was entitled Surface Charge Investigation of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes and Silicon Nitride Ceramic Particles.

Daniel Covarrubias

Advisor: Dr. Min-Ying Leung

Talithia Daniel

Advisor: Dr. Dennis Cox

Talithia, an second-year graduate student, spent the summer studying for her qualifier exams and worked at a summer program for the EDGE program mat Pomona College.

Kalatu Davies

Advisor: Dr. Dennis Cox

Kalatu, a second-year Statistics Graduate Student, worked on Bayesian Decision Analysis testing Swartz? recent work of using inverse decision theory (IDT) to apply backwards induction methodology to develop the inequalities for assessing the region for binary disease outcome and treatment options.

Chantal Edwards

Advisor: Dr. Mike Fagan

Chantal is an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She completed a research project wherein she verified numerical ODE integrators using automatic differentiation.

Hector Flores

Advisor: Dr. Andrea Berndt

Hector, a second-year Statistics Graduate Student, spent his summer studying and preparing for his upcoming qualifying examinations in January.

Musie Ghebremichael

Advisor: Dr. Javier Rojo

The objective of Musie?s summer research was to develop a new estimator of the Mean Residual Life (MRL) function which is a function of the sample MRL function as well as to develop a bivariate proportional mean residual model. Musie is a Statistics Ph.D. candidate.

Edward Gonzalez

Berkeley, CA

Advisor: Dr. Yin Zhang

Ed, a graduate student in the Computational and Applied Mathematics Department conducted research on Algorithms for Graph Minimum Bisection Problems which are based on a Combination of the Rank-2 Relaxation, Multilevel, and Frontiering Approaches. The research conducted will be used in a Ph.D. proposal given later this year. This was Ed?s third summer participating in the AGEP program.

Philip Graves

Midland, TX

Advisor: Dr. John Olson

A second-year graduate student in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Philip continued his study on the construction of genetically engineering hemoglobin.

Kary Green

Texarkana, AR

Advisor: Dr. Yin Zhang

Kary is an incoming graduate student in the Computational and Applied Mathematics department who studied a different approach to controlling the inverted pendulum problem using state-space methods.

Jason Guerrero

Portland, TX

Advisor: Dr. Victor Behar

Jason’s research project for the summer focused on Asymmetric Epoxidation of Unfunctionalized Olefins Using Fluorinated Binaphthyl Ketone Catalysts.

Jaime Hernandez

El Paso, TX

Advisor: Dr. Leticia Velazquez

Jaime is a graduate student at UT El Paso. His project for the summer was entitled “An Inexact Newton Trust Region Interior-Point Algorithm for Large-Scale Nonlinear Programs.

Marcos Huerta

Austin, TX

Advisor: Dr. Patrick Hartigan

Marcos Huerta is a graduate student with the Physics and Astronomy Department at Rice University. The title of his research project for this summer was “Forbidden Line emissions in the T Tauri Binaries DQ Tau and UZ Tau-E monitored over an orbital period.

Jennifer Jamison

Austin, TX

Advisor: Dr. Vicki Colvin

Jennifer is an incoming graduate student in the Chemistry department at Rice University. Her research for the summer was on the use of gold nanoparticles in biomedical applications.

Mackale Joyner

Kansas City, KS

Advisor: Dr. Ken Kennedy

Mack’s research for the summer was on improving the performance of Java Scientific applications. He is a second-year graduate student in the Department of Computer Science.

Robin Lopez

Klein, TX

Advisor: Dr. Bonnie Bartel

Robin Lopez is a sophomore Spanish and Biology major at Rice University. She spent the summer working on a research project entitled, “Analysis of the plant hormone indole-3-butyric acid in Arabidopsis thaliana: Genetic and phenotypic characterization of ibr8.

Robert Mallery

Spring, TX

Advisors: Dr. Stephen Cox and Dr. Mark Embree

Robert’s research project for the summer was titled, “Reverse Engineering Gene Networks with Microarray Data.”

Alicia Martin

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Alicia is an undergraduate student in the Mathematics department at Texas Southern University. Her research project for the summer was entitled, “Finding Errors in ODE Solvers with Multiple Implementations.”

Aaron Martinez

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. James Tour

Aaron, a second-year Chemistry Graduate Student, worked on a study entitled, “Nucleophilic Partners in the Tandem Conjugate Addition-Dieckmann Condensation: 1. Synthesis of 1,2,3-Trisubtituted Naphthalenes.” It was published in the Journal of Organic Chemistry.

Aramis Martinez

El Paso, TX

Advisor: Dr. Frank Toffoletto

Aramis’ summer research project focused on obtaining a visual output from the Rice Convection Model (RCM). He worked to create a visualization package in the Interactive Data Language from earlier purpose-built IDL graphing programs.

Jarret Mathwig

Stafford, TX

Advisor: Dr. Angelo Miele

Jarret, a graduate student in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, his research demonstrated the optimality of Hohmaqnn transfers for spacecraft and also the creation of a simple and basic procedure for determining the total change in velocity of the transfer.

Travis McPhail

Dallas, TX

Advisor: Dr. Joe Warren

Travis, an undergraduate student at Rice University, researched collision detection engines for fast collisions in the field of computer graphics this summer using a robust system. The primary push for his research was a game that the students in Rice’s advanced computer graphics class made the previous semester.

Adrienne Norwood

Baltimore, MD

Advisor: Dr. Bill Symes

Adrienne is an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She worked with Dr. Symes to create synthetic seismograms. Together, synthetic seismograms and real traces can be used to approximate the true velocity of seismic waves. The numerical results may be employed to determine the earth’s subsurface properties.

Paul Ontiveros

El Paso, TX

Advisor: Dr. Frank Toffoletto

This summer Paul worked on the development of a module to add to the Rice Field Model, a theoretical magnetic field model used to simulate the earth's magnetosphere.

Nicholas Parra-Vasquez

Oxnard, CA

Advisor: Dr. Matteo Pasquali

Nick, a second-year Chemical Engineering Graduate Student from the University of California at Berkeley, spent his summer studying for his qualifying exams.

Carlo Quinonez

Prosper, TX

Advisor: Dr. Phil Bedient

Carlo worked with Rice University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering department to analyze the floodplain of the North Main drain in Brownsville, TX.

Michael Ramon

Houston, TX

Advisor: Fathi Ghorbel

In Michael’s summer research project state of the art flying robots were researched with particular attention to robots built in the past and robots under construction. This will lead to a better understanding of how to build a successful flying robot. Consequently, a flying robot will be designed using computer aided design and animation.

John-David Rocha

Mesquite, TX

Advisor: Dr. Bruce Weisman

John-David is a graduate student in the Chemistry department at Rice University. His work for the summer was entitled “Simulatiion of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Optical Spectra.”

Betty Rostro

Dallas, TX

Advisor: Dr. Enrique Barrera

Betty received her undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Dallas. This summer, as a PhD canditate at Rice, Betty researched heat transfer nanofluids containing single-walled carbon nanotubes.

Alena Scott

Midland, TX

Advisor: Dr. David Scott

Alena's research this summer focused on the use of L2E for wavelet thresholding. As a Ph.D. Candidate in the Statistics Department, Alena has been a member of the AGEP family for five years.

Clayton Simien

Port Arthur, TX

Advisor: Dr. Tom Killian

Clayton is a Physics and Astronomy Graduate Student, and his summer research focused on helping to construct and use a laser at a wavelength of 422 nm to image and study ion dynamics in an ultracold neutral strontium plasma.

Amaris Swann

Albuquerque, NM

Advisor: Dr. Lisa Meffert

Amaris, a second-year Environmental Science and Engineering Graduate Student from the University of New Mexico, spent her summer focused on the question, “Is Outbreeding Always the Best Solution?” Her studies focused on the alligator snapping turtle, macrolemys temminckii.

Lakeshia Taite

Grove Hill, AL

Advisor: Dr. Jennifer West

Lakeshia, a Biochemistry and Cell Biology Graduate Student, spent the summer researching poly(ethylene glycol) copolymers for sustained delivery of nitric oxide to treat a diverse range of disease states.

Jerome Taylor

Decatur, GA

Advisor: Dr. Rudy Guerra

Jerome spent the first three weeks of the program learning statistics, the statistical packaging program S-Plus, and Mathematica. During the fourth week of the program, he began my research with two other students on the mean residual lifetime (MRL) function.

Jesse Turner

Memphis, TN

Advisors: Dr. Steven J. Cox and William Symes

Jesse spent his summer investigating the lac operon gene in E. coli bacterium. Jesse is a second-year graduate student it the Computational and Applied Mathematics Department.

Victor Udoewa

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Tayfun Tezduyar

Victor's summer research involved the computational aerodynamics of a paratrooper separating from an aircraft. Victor received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and came to Rice University to study fluid and solid mechanics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science.

Alicia Urdapilleta

Oakland, CA

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Alicia is an incoming graduate student in the Computational and Applied Mathematics department. She worked with Dr. Tapia this summer interpolating data for dragster runs.

Donald Williams

Houston, TX

Advisors: Dr. Richard Tapia and Dr. Jeff Fleming

Donald's work focuses on developing computational tools for the mathematical modeling and analysis of American-style option contracts under stochastic volatility. The tools form integral components of his thesis research. His methodology is motivated by a desire to incorporate additional economic constraints, which are typically ignored, into the computational model for pricing American-style option contracts. Donald is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Computational and Applied Mathematics.

Dwayne Williams

Pearland, TX

Advisor: Dr. Williams Symes

This summer Dwayne investigated optimizaiton algorithms which use inexact gradient and function values. He received his undergraduate degree from Dillard University and his Masters degree from Ohio State University. Dwayne is a third-year graduate student in the Computational and Applied Mathematics Department.

Powtawche Williams

New Orleans, LA

Advisor: Dr. Angelo Miele

Powtawche spent this summer experimenting with optimal trajectories to Mars using electrical propulsion. Powtawche received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University and came to Rice to study in the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Department.