Martha Lou Broussard ’57 and Onja Razafindratsima ’15 are the inaugural recipients of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences Alumni Awards, annual honors that recognize the professional and societal achievements of distinguished and recent alumni.
The awards will be presented during Rice’s Alumni Weekend Homecoming and Reunion Celebration Nov. 1-2.
Martha Lou Broussard ’57
2024 Distinguished Alumni Award
Broussard, the first woman to earn a geology degree from Rice, followed an impressive career in the oil industry with more than five decades of service in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences (EEPS), including two stints as a paid administrator and 32 years in her current role as volunteer alumni coordinator.
Broussard went to work in Houston’s oil industry at a time when women were openly and actively excluded. Fiercely determined, she succeeded, working at Shell Development Company and other Shell divisions as well as the United Kingdom’s Petroleum Information Ltd. A personable and gifted communicator, she began to build a vast network of personal contacts and served as either editor or associate editor for numerous publications of the American Association for Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), Geological Society of America, Houston Geological Society and other organizations.
“EVERYBODY knows her,” EEPS Department Chair Julia Morgan wrote in a letter supporting Broussard’s award nomination. “She is the main point of continuous contact with our alumni. She knows them all — from very senior to the most recent grads.”
Morgan credits Broussard for the unique “close-knit sense of community” among EEPS alumni.
In his letter of support for Broussard’s nomination, Cin-Ty Lee, EEPS' previous department chair, cited her “undying dedication to helping younger generations” build careers in the industry, particularly through the AAPG Student Expo. The annual meeting, which Broussard founded in 1998 and still directs, has become a leading recruiting venue for the energy and energy services industries.
“So many students at Rice and beyond do not realize that they got their first jobs or internships with Martha Lou behind the scenes,” Lee wrote.
Onja Razafindratsima ’15
2024 Recent Alumni Award
Razafindratsima, an assistant professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, is a tropical ecologist and conservation biologist whose research has revealed how the behavior of lemurs impacts and even structures the tropical forests of her home country, Madagascar.
In addition to honoring Razafindratsima’s professional and scholarly accomplishments, the Recent Alumni Award recognizes her commitment to increasing diversity in science, mentoring a new generation of Malagasy scientists and communicating her research via public outreach in Madagascar.
One of five siblings and the first in her family to attend graduate school, Razafindratsima decided to become a scientist while visiting a Malagasy forest research station in her early teens. Despite many obstacles, she excelled and was quickly recognized as a rising star. While still a Ph.D. student in the Biosciences lab of Associate Professor Amy Dunham, Razafindratsima was invited to be a lead author on a report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
Three chapters from Razafindratsima’s dissertation were featured as cover articles in peer-reviewed journals, and upon graduating in 2015, she secured a named postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University and won Rice’s Best Thesis Award in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. In 2023, UC Berkeley awarded her a coveted Regents’ Junior Faculty Fellowship.
“She is a creative thinker, a brilliant scientist and a talented teacher and mentor,” Dunham wrote in nominating Razafindratsima for the award. “Her exemplary record of academic achievement, leadership and service exemplifies the values and mission of Rice University, and her contributions to the field of environmental sciences and conservation biology are both significant and far-reaching.”