Civil and Environmental Engineering

Wastewater study monitors Houston schools for viral threats

A new study by Rice University and the Houston Health Department finds that wastewater-based monitoring is an effective way to detect viral outbreaks in schools.

Lauren Stadler has won an NSF CAREER Award

Engineering’s Lauren Stadler has received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to improve wastewater treatment by harnessing the power of microbiomes.

Lab Notes for Jan. 30, 2023

STAT’s Hopkins co-authors National Academies report. CAREER Awards keep coming. DOE funds NEWT desalination research.

Rice’s Jamie Padgett wins Texas academy’s O’Donnell Award

Rice University structural engineer Jamie Padgett has received the 2023 Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Engineering from The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas.

Daylong wastewater samples yield surprises

Rice engineers find snapshots lead to bias in testing wastewater for antibiotic-resistant genes.

Padgett named NSF BRITE Fellow

Rice University engineer Jamie Padgett is one of five United States researchers to be named a National Science Foundation BRITE Fellow.

Strategic planning process to be launched in January

President Reginald DesRoches shared the news with the Rice community in an email Nov. 21.

ACS taps Rice, Shell for Partners in Progress & Prosperity Award

Collaborators at Rice and Shell receive the American Chemical Society Southwest Regional Partners in Progress & Prosperity Award.

Cool respite with a conscience

Rice faculty members have installed “Building Ecologies” at Post Houston to demonstrate a “circular” strategy that incorporates environmental systems into architecture.

Bacterial sensors send a jolt of electricity when triggered

Rice researchers develop programmable bacteria that sense contaminants and release an electronic signal in real time.

NSF backs bid to speed environmental tests for viruses

The NSF backs Rice University efforts to speed the analysis of wastewater for coronaviruses from hours to seconds.

Rice rises to No. 15 in US News rankings

Rice has risen to No. 15 among the nation’s top universities ranked in the latest edition of U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Colleges” guidebook.

People, papers and presentations for Sept. 12, 2022

Rice statisticians Katherine Ensor and Loren Hopkins and civil and environmental engineer Lauren Stadler are co-authors of a commentary in Nature Medicine that issues an urgent call to scale up wastewater monitoring to detect early signs of disease.

People, papers and presentations for Aug. 15, 2022

A paper co-authored by postdoctoral research associate Mohammad Salehi and President Reginald DesRoches, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and of mechanical engineering, was selected as the featured article for a recent volume of the journal Engineering Structures.

CDC names Houston Health Department, Rice a wastewater epidemiology Center of Excellence

A system to track COVID-19 through Houston’s wastewater became the basis of an epidemiology center that has now earned special designation from the U.S. government and $1 million in its first year of federal funding.