People, papers and presentations

Beth Beason-Abmayr, lecturer and laboratory coordinator in BioSciences, served as co-head judge at iGEM 2014 in Boston Oct. 30-Nov. 3. IGEM, the world’s premier undergraduate synthetic biology competition, celebrated its 10th year by attracting more than 2,400 attendees and 245 teams from dozens of countries. Beason-Abmayr, who began serving as a judge in regional and international iGEM competitions in 2011, has represented Rice as co-head judge at the competition since 2012.

Adriana Flores, graduate student in electrical and computer engineering (ECE), won “best paper” honors at the 2014 IEEE Workshop on Cognitive Radio Architectures for Broadband (CRAB) Oct. 21 in Raleigh, N.C. Flores, a graduate student in the lab of ECE Professor and Department Chair Edward Knightly, took the top honors with her master’s thesis, which investigated a new way to balance Wi-Fi traffic and provide downloads that are six times faster without adding any extra antennas or spectrum resources.