Recognition & Honors
Accolades & Acknowledgements
Jiaxuan Li (Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) has received the 2025 AGU Seismology Keiiti Aki Early Career Award, one of the highest honors for emerging researchers in seismology and geophysics. An observational seismologist, Li pioneers the use of fiber-optic sensing to study earthquake rupture imaging, source characterization, and volcanic processes. His research advances understanding of Earth’s dynamic systems and strengthens global approaches to monitoring seismic activity. Li joined the University of Houston in 2025 after a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology and earned his Ph.D. in Geophysics from UH in 2020.
Madhan Tirumalai, William Widger, and Sahar Ali (Biology and Biochemistry) have uncovered how a rare bacterium, Tersicoccus phoenicis, evades detection in NASA spacecraft clean rooms by entering a dormant state. Their study, published in Microbiology Spectrum, reveals that the microorganism can “play dead” to survive extreme sterilization conditions — an adaptation that may reshape sterilization and detection practices in clean rooms, hospitals, and pharmaceutical facilities.
The research team demonstrated that T. phoenicis can be revived using a resuscitation-promoting factor, confirming its ability to temporarily halt metabolic activity to endure harsh environments. These findings advance understanding of microbial survival in extreme conditions and may help improve strategies to control harmful bacteria in medical and industrial settings.
Michael S. Yantosca and Albert M. K. Cheng (Computer Science) have published their research, “Phonotomizer: A Compact, Unsupervised, Online Training Approach to Real-Time, Multilingual Phonetic Segmentation,” in the Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2025).
Their work introduces an innovative AI method that trains directly on raw sound files to enhance phonetic transcription across multiple languages — reducing model size and training time while improving real-time performance.
Jagoš R. Radović (Earth and Atmospheric Sciences), research associate professor, was recently published in Marine Pollution Bulletin for his study on residual oil in the USS Arizona shipwreck. His findings highlight the vessel’s dual role as both a memorial and a “living laboratory,” deepening understanding of how historic shipwrecks interact with marine ecosystems.
Ny Riavo Voarintsoa (Earth and Atmospheric Sciences), assistant professor of sedimentary geology, recently published “A 3.5-Year Rainfall Isotope Record from Northwestern Madagascar Featuring 17O-Excess and Implications for Paleoclimate Research” in Applied Geochemistry.
The study presents the first modern rainfall isotope series from northwestern Madagascar and highlights 17O-excess as a promising proxy for refining paleoclimate reconstructions in tropical monsoon regions.