People, papers and presentations

A paper by Dilip Asthagiri, a lecturer and director of the professional master’s program in Rice’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is one of 25 selected to appear in a “virtual special issue” of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Physical Chemistry B this month. The issue highlights papers that “demonstrate that modern physical chemistry possesses sharp spectroscopic and computational tools that can address prominent biophysical and biochemical questions.” Asthagiri’s paper uses the regularization approach to free energy calculations, an approach he developed that enabled the first direct all-atom calculation of the hydration thermodynamics of a realistic protein. The work featured in the journal’s special issue highlights the role of hydration in helix uncoiling and helix-helix disassembly.

Yuan Jin, who recently earned a master’s degree at the Rice School of Architecture, was the sole American among eight winners of this year’s Archiprix International Hunter Douglas Awards. Winners in the ninth biennial competition were named Feb. 10 at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India. The event showcased the world’s best graduation projects as selected by universities around the world. Jin’s entry, “Through Thick and Thin, A Celebration of Spatial Experiences,” explored the language of architecture and challenged ideas of how people process architectural spaces. It was one of 385 projects entered into the competition. Ron Witte, an associate professor of architecture, was Jin’s thesis adviser at Rice.

Zhoudunming Tu, a graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, won the Young Scientist Award for the best oral presentation at the Quark Matter conference Feb. 5-11 in Chicago. The Quark Matter conference is the biggest in the field of relativistic heavy ion physics.