Recognition & Honors
Calista Brown (Mathematics) will be serving again as a Staff Council Representative for the Academic Affairs Division.
Byron Freelon (Physics) has been selected as a 2024–2025 Fulbright U.S. Scholar for Brazil. His work will engage U.S. and Brazilian scholars in an effort to develop and grow bi-national networks that can improve the career and technical standing of Afro-descendent physicists and improve technical capabilities in the rapidly developing area of inelastic X-ray scattering data interpretation and modeling. He will work with Afro-Brazilian physicists to develop programming that promotes dissemination and exposure of their technical work and will collaborate on efforts to seek funds for English translation services desired by Brazilian researchers.
Shiv Halasyamani (Chemistry) and Kenneth R. Poeppelmeier (Northwestern University) were recognized for their paper’s inclusion in the Chemistry of Materials 1k Club, a designation when a paper reaches 1,000 citations. A foundational review, “Noncentrosymmetric Oxides,” was published in 1998 as part of a Special Issue on the Frontiers in Inorganic Solid-State Chemistry. At the time, Halasyamani was a graduate student working with Poeppelmeier at Northwestern University’s Department of Chemistry and the Materials Research Center. Their review provided critical insight into the structure-property relationships of noncentrosymmetric oxides. Using the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD) from 1996, nearly 600 noncentrosymmetric oxides were categorized by the authors according to their symmetry-dependent property, crystal class, and cationic coordination environment.
Krešimir Josić (Mathematics) was interviewed for an article in New Scientist, “Speed of decision-making reflects our biases.” The article, based on findings soon to be published in the American Physical Society’s journal, Physical Review E, discusses early findings of a study of decision-making. Using a mathematical model, the researchers determined that the longer it takes someone to make a choice, the less likely they are to be influenced by their inherent biases. Fast deciders reach their choice quickly because their inherent bias directs them rapidly to some definitive point in “decision space,” while slow deciders take so much longer to accumulate information that they essentially “forget” about their inherent biases. Collaborators were at University of Utah, Florida State University, and University of Colorado Boulder.
Jennifer Knobloch (NSM Advancement) was a June Cougar Cudos recipient. Cougar Cudos, a recognition program of UH Staff Council, celebrates exceptional UH staff through peer nominations. Congrats to Jennifer!
Liming Li (Physics, corresponding author), Xun Jiang (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences), Xinyue Wang (Ph.D. student, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences), and colleagues from multiple universities and agencies published findings in Nature Communications that reveal a massive energy imbalance on Saturn, shedding new light on planetary science and evolution and challenging existing climate models for the solar system’s gas giants. This is the first time that a global energy imbalance on a seasonal scale has been observed on a gas giant. The data also suggests that Saturn’s unbalanced energy budget plays a key role in the development of giant storms which are a dominant weather phenomenon in the planet’s atmospheric system. This data may also provide some insight into weather on Earth. Additional UH graduate students, Larry Guan (Physics) and Thishan D. Karandana G and Ronald Albright (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences), conducted the study with Wang, advised by professors Li and Jiang. Other co-authors were from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Wisconsin, University of Maryland, University of Central Florida, University of California, Santa Cruz, Université Côte d’Azur (France), and University of the Basque Country (Spain).
Mariam Manuel (teachHOUSTON/Mathematics) delivered an invited distinguished lecture at the 2024 American Society for Engineering Education annual conference through the Pre-College Engineering Education division. Her talk, titled “Building Pathways and Breaking Down Barriers in Culturally Responsive and Community-Centered Engineering Education,” served as the plenary session for the division. Manuel explored how culturally responsive practices can complement and integrate with the engineering design process. She also shared best practices and lessons learned in forging authentic partnerships with local communities, emphasizing the importance of trust and shared leadership.
Claudia Ratti, Anthony Timmins (Physics) and Physics postdoctoral research fellow Johannes Jahan brought the international Pint of Science event to the U.S. Pint of Science takes topics out of the lab or classroom and places them in more social settings, such as pubs and breweries. The goal is to provide the public with greater access to discussions of scientific developments. Ratti and Jahan served as the U.S.-wide event coordinators, and Timmons was the Houston event coordinator. Houston’s Pint of Science events were held for three nights at True Anomaly Brewing, one of five event locations across the country. Faculty and students from Departments of Physics (Rene Bellwied and Rubem Mondaini), Biology & Biochemistry (Preethi Gunaratne, Chrysa Latrick, and Ph.D. student Sakuni Rankothgedera), Chemistry (Ph.D. student Aidan Looby), and Electrical Engineering (Pieremanuele Canepa) gave talks during the Houston event. Nearly 200 people attended the series of lay-friendly talks.
Zhifeng Ren (Physics/TcSUH) received the 2024 Outstanding Achievement in Thermoelectrics Award presented by the International Thermoelectric Society (ITS). The award recognizes outstanding achievement in scholarship and service to the thermoelectrics community and is the highest recognition for researchers in the field. Ren gave the Award Lecture at the joint 40th International and 20th European Thermoelectric Conference, supported by the ITS and the European Thermoelectric Society. He received a cash prize of $5,000, honorary membership in the ITS, and a one-of-a-kind trophy—a medal engraved out of the thermoelectric SiGe alloy and copper-based electrodes that produced electrical power from radioisotope-produced heat to power the deep space missions since the 1960s.
Xin Shi (Physics/TcSUH) received the 2024 Goldsmid Award for Excellence in Research in Thermoelectrics by a Graduate Student from the International Thermoelectric Society. The award recognizes graduate work in theoretical, experimental, or device research in thermoelectrics. It carries a cash prize of $1,000 and a certificate. Shi, now a postdoctoral fellow at TcSUH, received his Ph.D. in Physics in May 2024. His advisor was Zhifeng Ren (Physics/TcSUH).
Tom Teets (Chemistry) and Ph.D. student and first author Dooyoung Kim published two manuscripts in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (June 10 and July 2). Photosensitizers are molecules that absorb light and convert that energy into a chemical potential. At present, earth-abundant photosensitizers tend to have short excited-state lifetimes, meaning they rapidly dissipate their energy after absorbing light, precluding any productive chemical processes from occurring. These papers introduced a new class of copper photosensitizers and unveiled two distinct strategies to obtain long excited-state lifetimes in these compounds. The first used sterically bulky ligand designs, meaning that the organic molecules that surrounded the copper were physically large, preventing structural distortions known to dissipate energy after light absorption. The second used a “triplet reservoir effect” strategy which introduces an organic molecule to the periphery of the photosensitizer that can store excited-state energy for longer timescales. In both cases, these modifications led to improved performance in photocatalytic reactions on organic compounds, showing that the ability to extend the excited-state lifetime is beneficial to applications where the absorbed light energy is used to drive chemical transformations. The July 2 publication involved collaborators from North Carolina State University and Case Western Reserve University.
Stephen Turner (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) co-authored “An Alternative to the Igneous Crust Fluid + Sediment Melt Paradigm for Arc Lava Geochemistry” in Science Advances with Charles Langmuir of Harvard University. This paper reassesses a commonly held ‘textbook’ model for the generation of volcanos associated with Earth’s subduction zones. The paradigmatic model involves the transfer of multiple types of material from the subducting plate into the overlying mantle, with an emphasis on ‘aqueous fluids.’ The authors outline several inconsistencies between this model and new experiments and measurements of volcanic rocks. Previous observations attributed to fluids are better accounted for by variations in the compositions of the marine sediment carried into the mantle on top of the sinking plate. They then use geochemical trace element and radiogenic isotope data to show that the available data are most consistent with a model of arc volcanism that involves widespread melt generation within the sinking plate itself.
Abdalla Zanouny (Biology & Biochemistry) has been selected by the National Association of Biology Teachers as the recipient of the 2024 Genetics Education Award. The award, sponsored by NABT and the Genetics Society of America, recognizes innovative, student-centered classroom instruction to promote the understanding of genetics and its impact on inheritance, health, and biological research. The honor includes a $500 honorarium, a recognition plaque to be presented at the NABT Professional Development Conference, and a one-year complimentary membership to NABT.