Faculty Recognition & Honors
Nouhad Rizk (Computer Science) received a $1,500 grant from UH’s Alternative Textbook Incentive Program (ATIP). Recognizing that the cost of textbooks is a significant burden to the success of students, UH Libraries, in collaboration with the Office of the Provost, created the ATIP. The program encourages faculty to adopt open educational resources in their courses by incorporating teaching and learning resources found in the public domain or by using resources licensed in such a way that anyone can freely use and re-purpose them. Rizk’s project proposal was to create an open textbook, Building Skills for Data Science.
Key Publications
Yunsoo Choi (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences), along with atmospheric sciences Ph.D. student Ebrahim Eslami and former Choi research group members Anirban Roy and Shuai Pan, authored a report which estimates the impact of reducing car-related air pollution by 2040. In this study, they quantified the health and economic impacts by modeling various scenarios such as increasing car emission standards and the percentage of electric vehicles. Findings were also published the journal, Atmospheric Environment.
Zhifeng Ren (Physics, TcSUH) and additional researchers from UH and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have reported the discovery of a new thermoelectric material that works efficiently at room temperature while requiring almost no costly tellurium, a major component of the current state-of-the-art material. The work, described in a paper published online by Science on July 18, has potential applications for keeping electronic devices, vehicles and other components from overheating. Ren was corresponding author on the paper.