People, papers and presentations

Heather O’Connell, a postdoctoral fellow at Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, is the third-place recipient of the 2014 Association of Black Sociologists Graduate Student Paper Award for “How the Legacy of Slavery and Racial Composition Shape Public School Enrollment Through the Use of Private Schools in the American South.” The paper was co-authored by Duke University sociology student Robert Reece. The Association of Black Sociologists is an open organization that focuses on incorporating historically disenfranchised groups and perspectives into sociology and subsequent efforts to promote social change.

Matteo Pasquali, chair of Rice’s Department of Chemistry and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, of materials science and nanoengineering and of chemistry, won the honorary Paul Schlack Man-Made Fibers Prize along with Marcin Otto, his collaborator at Netherlands-based Teijin Aramid, for their creation of carbon nanotube fibers. The annual prize presented by the European Man-Made Fibers Association goes to an academic and corporate research partnership.