OpenStax, the world’s largest nonprofit publisher of open educational resources (OER) based at Rice, announces a partnership with Google to expand access to relevant, trustworthy educational content. This partnership will enable the OpenStax library of more than 70 openly licensed, peer-reviewed textbooks to be discovered, searched and referenced within Google Gemini. These materials will be available to Gemini users 18 and older in the United States starting in August 2024.
Rice engineers have developed a smart material that could significantly enhance energy efficiency for indoor space cooling. The new thermochromic polymer blend has an estimated lifespan of 60 years and is lower cost than existing thermochromics.
Rice engineers have developed an AI machine learning system for real-time sensing of flooded roads through existing data sources and reporting mechanisms.
Texas’ energy reliability and the future of global energy supply chains are just a few of the topics addressed in the first annual Energy Insights – a collection of articles from fellows and scholars at the Center for Energy Studies (CES) from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy that provides expert data and analysis on some of the most pressing policy issues affecting national and global energy markets.
Four Rice fellows and three Rice-affiliated startup ventures were selected to be a part of the inaugural Houston cohort of The Activate Fellowship for 2024. Activate is widely recognized as one of the flagship entrepreneurship programs that support startups focused on deep tech, and these four founders are the only representatives of Texas academia in the cohort.
Globally, 800 million people living in hundreds of urban areas will face grave social and economic risks from sea level rise and routine coastal flooding by 2050.
Rice bioengineers have harnessed the lotus effect to develop a system for culturing cancer cell clusters that can shed light on hard-to-study tumor properties. The new zinc oxide-based culturing surface mimics the lotus leaf surface structure, providing a highly tunable platform for the high-throughput generation of three-dimensional nanoscale tumor models.
The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University is preparing for a monumental milestone, beginning a multiyear celebration this fall in honor of the school’s 50th anniversary.
Rice has appointed Sanjoy Paul as executive director of the Rice Nexus, the university’s premier innovation factory in the Ion that will offer state-of-the-art facilities for prototyping, testing and launching new ventures by Rice faculty and students.
ChatGPT, the generative artificial intelligence technology developed by OpenAI, could help humans with daily, creative tasks — even tasks typically thought to require the human ability to “read between the lines,” according to new research by the University of Houston and Rice University. Its capability has proven to be superior compared to traditional Google search or even human brainstorming without any technical assistance, the study authors argue.
Rice's Shepherd School of Music is celebrating the return of alumni Cristian Măcelaru and the addition of opera luminary Patrick Summers to its faculty.
Rice Innovation announced its two most recent awardees of the One Small Step Grant , marking a significant milestone in accelerating the transition from lab to market for these Rice-developed technologies. Launched in September 2023, the grant aims to support lab-stage projects across campus, providing crucial capital for projects to spin out of the university and successfully attract investment from angel investors and venture capital.
