Summer Symposium

The OURI Summer Symposium showcases the work of SURF students as well as other Rice and non-Rice students who conduct research over the summer.

The inaugural symposium hosted 65 students in August 2022 with projects from Schools of Engineering, Humanities, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and Shepherd School of Music. Their project titles are included below.

  • Application of Nanoparticles to Mitigate Asphaltene Deposition in Crude Oil Reservoirs
  • Approaches for Ancestral State Reconstruction of Cancerous Cells
  • Assesing L1 Trigger Performance in Data for High-Energy Particle Collisions at the CMS Experiment
  • CAR-T Cell Therapy: Modifying the Intensity of GFP Expression
  • CLIP performance on radiology images
  • Compact Quantitative Multi-Pollutant Monitoring Device
  • Designing Large Genetic Constructs to Understand Nonlocal Part Interactions for Manipulable Mammalian Gene Expression
  • Focused Ultrasound Guided CRISPR Delivery Through the Blood Brain Barrier to Targeted Specific Brain Sites
  • Is the molecular structure of a material the main contributing factor behind its vibrational damping ratio?
  • Optimization of Heat-Sealing Process for Polymeric Sheets & Textiles
  • Optimizing Interconnect Gap Size to Reduce Parasitic Capacitance in Interdigitated Electrodes for Epilepsy Diagnosis
  • Recombinant Expression and Purification of Gas Vesicle Protein GvpT
  • Retrofitting a Low-Cost 3D Printer to Facilitate Fabrication of Textile Based Devices
  • Techniques to Increase the Efficiency of LbCas12a
  • Testing Spectral Regrowth Uniqueness for Identification of Custom Designed Microchips
  • Testing the Biases of Face Recognition Models using Synthetic Face Generators
  • The Development of a Targeted Delivery System of Corticosteroids to the Gut using Corticosteroid-containing Prodrugs tethered to Commensal Gut Bacteria
  • The Effects of Dip Coatings on the Contact Surfaces between Brake-Reuss Beams
  • The Introduction of Robots Outside the Lab
  • Towards Sociability Measures Using Speech Classification
  • Ultra High Throughput Characterization of Synthetic Genetic Systems in Mammalian Cells
  • Using Deep Object Pose Estimation for Semantic Robotic Grasping of Household Objects
  • Democratic Disruptions in El Salvador: The Relations and Interactions Between President Nayib Bukele and the Legislative Assembly
  • Embracing The Demons of the African Pentecostal Church
  • Evaluating the Impact of Goals on Healthcare Leadership Training Outcomes
  • Gender and Health in Mexico
  • Investigating African American migrants living on Seneschal Lot 5
  • Investigating the Impact of a Summer Bridge Program on STEM Identity Development: A Longitudinal Study
  • Investigating the Working Conditions of Contingent Faculty at Rice : A Qualitative Exploration
  • Lady Mary Montagu and her Perception of the Turkish Harem
  • Maritime Conflict in the South China Sea
  • Modern French Children's Literature and Effects on Race, Migration, and Assimilation
  • Niche Music Publishing Since the 2018 Music Modernization Act
  • The effect of amyloid and tau pathology on emotional mnemonic discrimination in cognitively normal older adults
  • The Relationship Between Educational Attainment and Occupational Outcomes for the U.S. Latine Population
  • The Road Less Traveled: Exploring the Untold Narratives of Freedman's Town
  • The University of Texas at Austin’s 1967 Expansion and Racial Inequality in Austin: an Exploration
  • ABCA4-Based Retinal Degenerative Disease Causing Alternated Transcriptome Expression in Human Retinal Organoids
  • Arousal's Effects on Responses in the Mouse Inferior Colliculus
  • Biodiversity Comparison amongst Different Environmental Habitats at Rice University
  • Determine the Kinetics of the Pam2-ODN treatment in the Lung Epithelium
  • Determining the Fidelity and Efficiency of Polymerase Theta, Potential Target for Cancer Treatments
  • Determining the Importance of Interferon-Gamma (IFN-γ) Signaling in Trained Immunity
  • Developing a Red Pitaya digital PID controller for trapped ion applications
  • Development of In Vitro Culture for Biomphalaria glabrata
  • Discovery of Injury Induced Cell States in the Planaria Flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea
  • Do less social flies survive longer in a trap compared to their more social conspecifics?
  • Elucidating the Role of Anti-Mullerian Hormone Signaling in Chicken Development
  • Engineering Robust Applications of Bacterial Optogenetics for Utilization in Synthetic Biology
  • Exploring Pseudomonas aeruginosa Virulence Using Killing Assays
  • Fiber Optic Coupling for Laser Cooling of Ultracold Atoms
  • High-throughput Screening of the Human Gut Microbiome for Two-Component System Diagnostic Biosensors
  • Imputing Cell Type Concentrations in the Human Retina with CIBERSORT and SEURAT
  • LRG-1 Expression after Subarachnoid Hemorrhage
  • Mapping Selective Binding of Surface Ligands on Anisotropic Gold Prisms​
  • Next Generation Sequencing Analysis of Genomic DNA From A Combinatorial CRISPR-Cas9 Screen on the SW480 Colorectal Cancer Cell Line
  • "Programming Super-MSCs: Engineering supraphysiological expression of immune modulatory cytokines in primary MSCs"
  • Social Information Use in Drosophila Melanogaster( Fruit fly)
  • Stress and Its Impact on Diet Among Houston College Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic
  • The Effect of Trophic Ecology on Skull Morphology of Individuals in Fish Family Pomacanthidae
  • The Effects of Evolutionary Traps on Life Histories of Drosophila melanogaster
  • The Effects of Temperature on Density in Daphnia simochelpus
  • The Role of Fatty Liver in Ornithine Transcarbamylase (OTC) Deficiency
  • The roles of Estrogen-Related Receptor α and γ on Exercise Pathways and Muscle Tissue
  • Understanding the Cell Non-Autonomous Role of Macrophages in Apoptosis-Induced Proliferation