Speaker Profiles
Philip Bedient
Director of SSPEED Center
Herman and George R. Brown Professor, Civil Engineering
Dr. Bedient’s research evaluates surface and ground water hydrology, and improves flood prediction systems. Many of Dr. Bedient’s projects have included major floodplain studies, water quality assessment, and hydrologic modeling for watersheds in Texas, Florida, California, and Louisiana. For the past two years, Dr. Bedient has taught CEVE 512: Hydrologic Design Lab, a Center for Civic Research and Design recognized course in which students analyze water problems through the design of Geographic Information System (GIS) developed hydrologic models. For 15 years, he has worked with the Texas Medical Center to develop reliable real-time flood-alert technology using NEXRAD radar data. Dr. Bedient’s system delivers computerized information to 22 institutions in the Texas Medical Center, so that in the event of a natural disaster that brings flooding, medical personnel are forewarned ahead of time. Currently, he is organizing the Houston test bed for the Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center led by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the University of Oklahoma. CASA will focus on revolutionary sensing technology that will enable earlier and more accurate forecasts of water emergencies and other atmospheric phenomena.
Alexander X. Byrd
Associate Professor, Department of History
Dr. Alexander Byrd’s research interests include the Atlantic World, African Diaspora and the U.S. African American population. He has recently finished his book Captives and Voyagers concerning the enslaved black migration to Jamaica and the free black migration to Sierra Leone. His future projects include an investigation into the history of two high schools in the Urban South since the decision of Brown v. Board.
Daniel S. Cohan
Assistant Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Dr. Cohan’s research focuses on atmospheric modeling and its application to air quality management. His areas of interest include atmospheric sensitivity analysis, environmental management, uncertainty analysis, and energy and the environment. Dr. Cohan is the recent recipient of a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award. As part of this award he has developed a 7-lesson curriculum that engages elementary students in hands-on measurements to learn about atmospheric science. The students measure air pollution and meteorological conditions on their school campuses, while learning about topics such as ozone and climate. Dr. Cohan is training Houston-area science teachers through the Conoco-Phillips Rice Elementary Science Laboratory and at 4 HISD schools that are piloting the curriculum.
Michael Emerson
Co-Director, Institute for Urban Research
Allyn & Gladys Cline Professor, Sociology
Dr. Emerson’s research focuses on how race and ethnic relations shape social action in the United States. Specifically he has looked at race and ethnic relationships in the context of health disparities, residential segregation and the institution of religion. He is the author of two award winning books People of the Dream and Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. The importance of community serves as an undercurrent in Dr. Emerson's scholastic endeavors and approach to teaching. His courses are geared towards taking students out of classroom and into the Houston community. As a result, Rice students have forged collaborative relationships with many Houston non-profit organizations, including the Hermann Park Conservancy, the Partnership for the Advancement and Immersion of Refugees (PAIR) and Pleasant Hill Ministries. For the past two years, Dr. Emerson has taught a course where student complete urban ethnographies on Houston neighborhoods.
Christopher Hight
Associate Professor in the School of Architecture
Dr. Hight’s research examines the relationship between information technologies, design practices, and emerging social order. He writes analytical articles which examine contemporary architectural practices and theoretical texts about related technological, urban, design, and social phenomena. Right now, he is the Project Director of Hydraulicity, a large-scale research and design project of Houston’s Brays Bayou. The undertaking maps the convergence of interests and agencies invested in Brays Bayou and offers recommendations for new green-friendly civic spaces in Houston. The recent research and design proposals were executed in summer 2007 under the auspices of the Rice Building Institute and the Rice School of Architecture in consultation with the SWE Group, the Harris County Flood Control District, and the Hermann Park Conservancy. The venture aims to maximize Houston’s ability to beautify and grow. In addition to his scholastic and Houston community endeavors.
Richard Johnson
Director of Sustainability
Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Environment and Society
Professor of the Practice of Environmental Studies in Sociology
Mr. Johnson oversees a number of campus sustainability initiatives that are being recognized locally and nationally. He helped to guide the sustainable design program for two new Rice residential colleges that are amongst the greenest dormitory buildings in the US. As a lecturer, Mr. Johnson co-teaches ENST 302/SOCI 304: Environmental Issues – Rice Into the Future as well as CHBE 281/ENST 281: Engineering Solutions for Sustainable Communities. Students in both courses work in teams to develop sustainable solutions for energy and environmental problems affecting Rice and the city of Houston. In addition to his on-campus projects, Mr. Johnson is the author of “Greening the Campus: Inside the World of the Campus Sustainability Professional,” a blog filled with insights and observations from the trenches of the campus greening movement.
Stephen L. Klineberg
Co-Director Institute for Urban Research
Professor, Sociology
In March 1982, Dr. Klineberg and his students initiated the annual Houston Area Survey, now in its 29th year of tracking the remarkable changes in the demographic patterns, experiences, attitudes, and beliefs of Harris County residents. The recipient of ten major teaching awards at Rice, including the Lifetime Award for Excellence in Teaching, Klineberg is writing a book on the Houston research and serving as co-Director of Rice University’s new Institute for Urban Research. The mission of Institute is to provide a permanent home for the annual Houston surveys, to stimulate other metropolitan research, to sponsor educational programs, and to engage in public outreach that advances understanding of pressing urban issues and fosters the development of more humane and sustainable cities..
Edward Knightly
Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr. Edward Knightly’s research interests include mobile and wireless networks, and denial-of-service resilient protocol design. Rice Group Network, in collaboration with the non-profit organization Technology for All, is working on the deployment, operation, and management of a large-scale urban mesh network in Pecan Park, an under-resourced neighborhood in east Houston. The National Science Foundation project has made a great amount of progress; the network, TFA Wireless, is serving over 4,000 users in the area. The objective of the project is to provide inhabitants with access to technology and educational tools. For two years, Dr. Knightly has taught ELEC 438: Wireless Networking for Under-Resourced Urban Communities. Students enrolled in the course work in teams to perform measurement studies in the Rice Networks Laboratory and in the East End neighborhood, to optimize the placement of wireless nodes, to study the effects of traffic and to plan additional nodes to extend the coverage area. Currently, the Rice Groups Network is developing a clean-state-design hardware platform for high-performance multi-hop wireless.
Robert M. Stein
Director, Center for Civic Engagement
Lela Gohlman Fox Professor, Political Science
Dr. Stein is an expert on urban politics and public policy. He is co-author of Perpetuating the Pork Barrel: Policy Subsystems and American Democracy and Urban Alternatives: Public and Private Markets in the Provision of Local Services. His work has also appeared in a wide range of scholarly journals. Dr. Stein's current research on elections is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust. He has conducted numerous public opinion polls regarding public support for local public schools as well individual response to the threat of hurricanes.
Devika Subramanian
Professor, Computer Science
Devika Subramanian’s research interests are in the design and analysis of statistical machine learning algorithms and their applications in science and engineering. Her work has appeared in premier conferences and journals in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer systems, compilers, networking, computational biology, protein crystallography, robotics, mechanical engineering design, computational neuroscience, cognitive science, and political science. She has given many invited lectures on her work. She has won teaching awards at Stanford, Cornell and at Rice. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Office of Naval Research, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Microsoft Corporation,and the Texas Advanced Technonology Program.
Lin Zhong
Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Lin Zhong received his B.S. and M.S. from Tsinghua University in 1998 and 2000, respectively. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in September, 2005. He worked with NEC Labs, America, for the summer of 2003 and with Microsoft Research for the summers of 2004 and 2005. Since September, 2005, he has been with the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Rice University, as an assistant professor. He received the AT&T Asian-Pacific Leadership Award in 2001 and the Harold W. Dodds Princeton University Honorific Fellowship for 2004-2005. He and his students received the best paper awards from ACM MobileHCI 2007 and IEEE PerCom 2009. A paper he co-authored was identified as one of the 30 most influential papers in the first 10 years of Design, Automation & Test in Europe conferences by the conference. His research interests include mobile & embedded system design, human-computer interaction, and nanoelectronics. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Motorola Labs, Microsoft Research, Nokia, and Texas Instruments.