Jason Ling
Jason Ling is pursuing a Ph.D. in Astronomy at Rice University in the Department of Physics and Astronomy under the supervision of Andrea Isella. Jason’s research focuses on understanding the characteristics of planets outside of our solar system, which includes revealing the details of their formation.
Emily Thomas
Emily Thomas is a graduate student at Rice University pursuing a Ph.D. in biochemistry and cell biology in the Department of Biosciences under the supervision of Joff Silberg. Emily designs tools that make studying proteins easier. Emily’s work involves adding tags to proteins as they are made inside a cell of interest. This way, she can identify what cells are producing the tagged protein and study proteins inside a cell without isolating it from its environment.
Laura Carter
Laura Carter is pursuing a Ph.D. in Earth science at Rice University in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences under the supervision of Rajdeep Dasgupta. Laura uses high pressure-high temperature experiments to explore the geochemical reactions that occur when magma interacts with rocks in the Earth’s crust prior to a volcanic eruption.
Jamal Rorie
Jamal Rorie is pursuing a Ph.D. in physics at Rice University in the Department of Physics and Astronomy working with Paul Padley. Jamal is trying to understand the fundamental structure of the physical universe by studying the products of high-energy particle collisions here on Earth. He searches for evidence of dark matter in muon pair data at the Compact Muon Solenoid detector, one of two large detectors built on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
Emily Schultz
Emily Schultz is a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology at Rice University working in the Department of Biociences under the supervision of Tom Miller. Emily is a population biologist who focuses on how environmental variation and species interactions affect population dynamics. She looks at groups of populations that are geographically distinct but still have some contact with the aim of understanding how different environments affect population growth rates.
Tom VandenBoom
Tom VandenBoom is working on a Ph.D. at Rice University in the Department of Mathematics under the supervision of David Damanik. Tom studies mathematical models of quantum mechanical phenomena that describe the fundamental mechanisms at work when wave-particles interact with conductive media. Specifically, he studies certain families of dynamical systems that preserve the spectrum of infinite real symmetric matrices acting on Hilbert space.
Dayne Swearer
Dayne Swearer is pursuing a Ph.D. in chemistry at Rice University in the Department of Chemistry under the supervision of Naomi Halas. Dayne’s research uses nanostructured materials to harvest sunlight to drive chemical reactions of societal and industrial importance. He focuses on developing technologies that may one day harvest the power of the sun in ways beyond traditional solar cells.