Faculty Recognition & Honors
Giulia Toti (Computer Science) received a UH Teaching Innovation Program Grant. Toti’s proposal, “Creation of a Web IDE to Improve Teaching and Evaluation in Programming Courses,” was awarded $35,000. TIP grants, an initiative of the Provost and Office of Academic Affairs, are an award opportunity for departments to develop and implement a plan for new and innovative approaches to teaching in online and hybrid environments.
Key Publications
Zhifeng Ren (Physics and TcSUH) published the discovery of a new explanation for asymmetrical thermoelectric performance, the phenomenon that occurs when a material that is highly efficient in a form which carries a positive charge is far less efficient in the form which carries a negative charge, or vice versa. Ren, corresponding author on the paper in Science Advances, said they have developed a model to explain the previously unaddressed disparity in performance between the two types of formulations. They then applied the model to predict promising new materials to generate power using waste heat from power plants and other sources.
Will Sager (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) with co-authors from Texas A&M University, China and Japan, published “Oceanic plateau formation by seafloor spreading implied by Tamu Massif magnetic anomalies” in Nature Geoscience. The study analyzed magnetic field data over Tamu Massif, finding that magnetic anomalies – perturbations to the field caused by magnetic rocks in the Earth’s crust – resemble those formed at mid-ocean ridge plate boundaries. Researchers concluded that the volcano formed by mid-ocean ridge “spreading,” the geologists’ term for creation of ocean crust at mid-ocean ridge plate boundaries, rather than as a shield volcano, as previously thought.