Fernando Acosta

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Steve Cox

Leticia Benitez

El Paso, TX

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Leticia is a graduate student in the Computational and Applied Mathematics department who received her M.A. in May 2004. She spent her summer analyzing an algorithm based on Newton?s method that is equivalent to inverse iteration. This is her second summer participating in the Rice AGEP program.

Natalie Capiro

Advisor: Dr. Phil Bedient

Natalie's summer research project was titled ?A Large-Scale Experimental Investigation of the Impact of Ethanol on Groundwater Contamination.? She is a fourth year graduate student in Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Edward Castillo

Advisor: Dr. Steve Cox

Ed spent his summer completing a Master?s Thesis. His project centered on a type of genetic network modeling known as probabilistic Boolean networks.

Jamie Chatman

Advisor: Dr. Katherine Donato

Jamie worked with Katherine Donato from the sociology department on a research project examining the differences in nativity (being native to the US or foreign born), race, and illness.

Erica Corral

Advisor: Dr. Enrique Barrera

Erica Corral is a graduate student in the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science department. Her summer was spent at Sandia Labs in New Mexico.

Daniel Covarrubias

Advisor: Dr. Katherine Ensor

This past summer Dan was involved with the Rice University Summer in Statistics program. The program mentored 17 undergraduate students with the goal of providing an insight into statistical methodology and research .

Talithia Daniel

Advisor: Dr. David Scott

Talithia?s research for the summer was focused on multi-component part type failure modeling of space orbiters at the Johnson Space Center. She is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Statistics department at Rice.

Kalatu Davies

Advisor: Dr. Dennis Cox

This fall, Kalatu will start her fifth year in the Department of statistics at Rice University. This summer she spent time completing projects that will be included in her dissertation. In addition she has started writing articles that will be submitted to journals. She hopes to finish her graduate program by May of 2005

Nikki Delk

Chantal Edwards

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Chantal is an incoming first-year student in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics. She spent her summer preparing for her upcoming semester by purchasing her books early and studying the material. She met with Dr. Tapia weekly to update him on her progress.

Hector Flores

Advisor: Dr. Rolf Riedi

Under the remote guidance of Dr. Rolf Riedi (Rice Statistics) and Dr. Andrew Weber (University of North Carolina), Hector?s summer project involved data-based classification of TCP losses. More specifically, he simulated typical TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) networks using NS2 (Network Simulator 2) and examined network attributes associated with packet drops (losses).

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, had a goal of attempting to verify the new multilevel approach for the minimum-bisection problem, which is the core of his research

Kary Green

Texarkana, AR

Advisor: Dr. Yin Zhang

Kary, a second year student from the Computational and Applied Mathematics department spent the summer studying for the numerical analysis qualifying exam.

Jason Guerrero

Portland, TX

Advisor: Dr. Victor Behar

Jason?s research focused on the development of chiral ketone catalysts for the asymmetric epoxidation of alkenes. Among these were solubility of the organic substrate/catalyst and the inorganic oxidant oxone, reduction of background nonstereoselective direct epoxidation by ozone, and Baeyer-Villiger degredation of the ketone catalyst.

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.

Miguel Guerrero

Houston, TX

Advisor: Walid Taha

Miguel will be a freshman at Houston Community College in the fall. He spent the beginning of the summer learning LaTex typesetting language,

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 a second-year graduate student in the Chemistry department at Rice University. Her research for the summer was entitled, ?Analytica Ultracentrifugation as Applied to Bionanoconjugates.?

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 spent the summer working on his Master?s thesis which he will defend in the fall.

Aaron Martinez

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Victor Behar

Aaron, a second-year Chemistry Graduate Student, continued his research on the total synthesis of the antibiotic, lactonamycin and related polyketides.

Aramis Martinez

El Paso, TX

Advisor: Dr. Frank Toffoletto

Aramis spent his summer traveling! He visited the Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) 2004 Summer Workshop in Snowmass, Colorado and the Center for Integrated Space weather Modeling (CISM) Summer School at Boston University. His summer project was learning how to analyze electron density profiles in the cusp and high-latitude regions of the earth?s magnetosphere using radio sounding returns (called plasmagrams) from the Radio Plasma Imager (RPI) instrument on NASA?s IMAGE satellite. Aramis is a Physics and Astronomy Ph.D. student.

Naxhiely Martinez

San Antonio, TX

Advisor: Dr. Dan Wagner

Naxhiely is an incoming graduate student in the department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Her summer research was titled, “Does the Yolk Cell Cytoskeleton Direct Epiboly in Zebrafish?”

Yenny Martinez

Altadena, CA

Advisor: Dr. Thomas Killian

Yenny is a physics Ph.D. student under Dr. Killian. She spent her summer building and characterizing a high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity. Her paper was entitled, “Laser Cooling and Trapping Neutral Strontium Atoms.”

Jarret Mathwig

Stafford, TX

Advisor: Dr. Angelo Miele

Jarret is a fourth year graduate student in the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science department. He spent his summer working a project involving Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). Jarret, his office mate, and his advisor were able to write and submit a paper to be published in the Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications this summer.

Travis McPhail

Dallas, TX

Advisor: Dr. Joe Warren

Sheila Moore

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Tony Mikos

Sheila is a second year graduate student in the Bioengineering department. The objective of her summer was to obtain the knowledge and materials necessary to encapsulate cells within an oligo (poly(ethylene glycol)-fumarate), OPF, hydrogel crosslinked with a MMP sensitive peptide.

Josue Noyola-Martinez

Paul Ontiveros

El Paso, TX

Advisor: Dr. Frank Toffoletto

Paul?s summer was devoted to the development of a computational model that represents the field aligned current system of the magnetosphere. He is a graduate student in the Physics and Astronomy department.

Joanna Papakonstantinou

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Joanna spent her summer preparing for the Wavelets and Multifractional Analysis (WAMA) Institute which she attended in July. She also deepened her understanding of numerical analysis in preparation for her qualifying exam in December.

Nicholas Parra-Vasquez

Oxnard, CA

Advisor: Dr. Matteo Pasquali

Nicholas Parra-Vasquez, on the summer between his second and third year of graduate school in the chemical engineering department, worked on obtaining the ultimate fiber comprised only of purified single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). This work of course cannot be accomplished in one summer, so this summer his research concentrated on testing additives to make of more desireable solution. Additives tried included salts and superior acids, Nick concentrated on functionalizing the side-walls of the SWNTs (adding to the SWNT not the solution). He found no significant improvement, thus a new direction must be taken.

Carlo Quiñonez

Prosper, TX

Advisor: Dr. Phil Bedient

Naomi Reed

Missouri City, TX

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia and Dr. Brad Peercy

Naomi?s project for the summer was to initiate her research plan and ideas for her Master?s thesis which she will complete upon returning to Rice after obtaining her Master?s degree in Social Science (concentration in Anthropology) from the University of Chicago. Her project will combine both Mathematical Modeling and Social Science.

John-David Rocha

Mesquite, TX

Advisor: Dr. Bruce Weisman

Entering his 2nd year of doctoral study in Chemisty, John-David focused on the design and implementation of novel instrumentation for real-time analytical spectrofluorimetry of single-walled carbon nanotubes.

Christopher Rodriguez

Beaumont, TX

Advisor: Dr. Mary Ellen Lane

Chris is an incoming graduate student in the Biochemistry and Cell Biology department. He conducted research on the gene 1mo4, which has been implicated as being a gene that contributes to cancer in humans.

Alena Scott

Midland, TX

Advisor: Dr. David Scott

Alena is a graduate student in the Statistics department. Her research for the summer was on finding an adaptive threshold using a new technique in density estimation, L2E.

Josef Sifuentes

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Richard Tapia

Josef spent the summer reviewing real and numerical analysis in order to prepare to take a qualifying exam and to prepare first year as a graduate student in the department of Computational and Applied Mathematics.

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.

Jesse Turner

Memphis, TN

Advisors: Dr. Steven J. Cox and William Symes

Jesse spent the first part of the summer preparing for his Master’s defense on the mathematical modeling of the lac operon. After his thesis was complete he picked his doctoral topic.

Victor Udoewa

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Tayfun Tezduyar

Jesus (Jerry) Vera

Kingsville, TX

Advisor: Dr. Enrique Barrera

Jerry, a first year Mechanical Engineering graduate student worked as a Mechanical Engineer and student researcher at the Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory (ASPL) at the NASA Johnson Space Center where he had been employed while an undergraduate under the URETI grant program.

Donald Williams

Houston, TX

Advisors: Dr. Richard Tapia and Dr. Jeff Fleming

Donald's work focused on the development of a new constrained optimization approach for pricing derivative financial products. His methodology is motivated by a desire to incorporate additional economic constraints, which are typically ignored, into the computational model for American-style spread option contracts. As a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Computational and Applied Mathematics, Donald should receive his doctoral degree this year.

Dwayne Williams

Pearland, TX

Advisor: Dr. Williams Symes

Dwayne is a graduate student from the Computational and Applied Mathematics Department. His research was entitled, ?Algorithm Models for Unconstrained Optimization Using Approximated Function and Gradient Values.

Powtawche Williams

New Orleans, LA

Advisor: Dr. Angelo Miele

Powtawche is a Ph.D. candidate with the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Department, Aero-Astronautics Group. Her research project was entitled, ?Studies on Optimal Trajectories to Mars Using Electrical Propulsion.?

Jose-Miguel Yamal

Houston, TX

Advisor: Dr. Dennis Cox

José-Miguel Yamal, a Ph.D. candidate in the statisics department, worked on building a classifier to quantitatively predict whether someone will have cervical cancer from a pap smear. He is working on mutli-level polytomous classification problems.

Fernando Zumbado

Houston, TX

Advisor: Marcia O’Malley

Fernando is a student in the Mechanical Engineering Department. His research focuses on bilateral teleoperation and variable time communication delay.