Rice scientist earns $600K NSF award to study distractions in digital age

fresh funding

Kirsten Adam, a Rice psychologist, is studying how the brain refocuses in the age of screens, instant gratification and other lingering distractions. Photo via Pexels.

Rice University psychologist Kirsten Adam has received a $600,000 National Science Foundation CAREER Award to research how visual distractions like phone notifications, flashing alerts, crowded screens and busy workspaces can negatively impact focus—and how the brain works to try to regain it.

The highly competitive five-year NSF grants are given to career faculty members with the potential to serve as academic models and leaders in research and education. Adam’s work will aim to clarify how the brain refocuses in the age of screens, instant gratification and other lingering distractions. The funding will also be used to train graduate students in advanced cognitive neuroscience methods, expand access to electroencephalography (EEG) and for public data sharing.

“Kirsten is a valued member of the School of Social Sciences, and we are thrilled that she has been awarded the prestigious NSF CAREER,” Rachel Kimbro, dean of social sciences, said in a news release. “Because distractions continue to increase all around us, her research is timely and imperative to understanding their widespread impacts on the human brain.”

In Adam’s lab, participants complete simplified visual search tasks while their brain activity is recorded using EEG, allowing researchers to measure attention shifts in real time. This process then captures the moment attention is drawn from a goal and how much effort it takes to refocus.

According to Rice, Adam’s work will test long-standing theories about distraction. The research is meant to have real-world implications for jobs and aspects of everyday life where attention to detail is key, including medical imaging, airport security screening and even driving.

“At any given moment, there’s far more information in the world than our brains can process,” Adam added in the release. “Attention is what determines what reaches our awareness and what doesn’t.”

Additionally, the research could inform the design of new technologies that would support focus and decision-making, according to Rice.

“We’re not trying to make attention limitless,” Adam added. “We’re trying to understand how it actually works, so we can stop designing environments and expectations that fight against it.”

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Rice University's Lei Li has been awarded a $550,000 NSF CAREER Award to develop wearable, hospital-grade medical imaging technology. Photo by Jeff Fitlow/ Courtesy Rice University

Rice University professor earns $550k NSF award for wearable imaging tech​

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Another Houston scientist has won one of the highly competitive National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Awards.

Lei Li, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University, has received a $550,000, five-year grant to develop wearable, hospital-grade medical imaging technology capable of visualizing deep tissue function in real-time, according to the NSF. The CAREER grants are given to "early career faculty members who demonstrate the potential to serve as academic models and leaders in research and education."

“This is about giving people access to powerful diagnostic tools that were once confined to hospitals,” Li said in a news release from Rice. “If we can make imaging affordable, wearable and continuous, we can catch disease earlier and treat it more effectively.”

Li’s research focuses on photoacoustic imaging, which merges light and sound to produce high-resolution images of structures deep inside the body. It relies on pulses of laser light that are absorbed by tissue, leading to a rapid temperature rise. During this process, the heat causes the tissue to expand by a fraction, generating ultrasound waves that travel back to the surface and are detected and converted into an image. The process is known to yield more detailed images without dyes or contrast agents used in some traditional ultrasounds.

However, current photoacoustic systems tend to use a variety of sensors, making them bulky, expensive and impractical. Li and his team are taking a different approach.

Instead of using hundreds of separate sensors, Li and his researchers are developing a method that allows a single sensor to capture the same information via a specially designed encoder. The encoder assigns a unique spatiotemporal signature to each incoming sound wave. A reconstruction algorithm then interprets and decodes the signals.

These advances have the potential to lower the size, cost and power consumption of imaging systems. The researchers believe the device could be used in telemedicine, remote diagnostics and real-time disease monitoring. Li’s lab will also collaborate with clinicians to explore how the miniaturized technology could help monitor cancer treatment and other conditions.

“Reducing the number of detection channels from hundreds to one could shrink these devices from bench-top systems into compact, energy-efficient wearables,” Li said in the release. “That opens the door to continuous health monitoring in daily life—not just in hospitals.”

Amanda Marciel, the William Marsh Rice Trustee Chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering and an assistant professor at Rice, received an NSF CAREER Award last year. Read more here.

HEXAspec, founded by Tianshu Zhai and Chen-Yang Lin, has been awarded an NSF Partnership for Innovation grant. Photo courtesy of Rice

Rice University spinout lands $500K NSF grant to boost chip sustainability

cooler computing

HEXAspec, a spinout from Rice University's Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, was recently awarded a $500,000 National Science Foundation Partnership for Innovation grant.

The team says it will use the funding to continue enhancing semiconductor chips’ thermal conductivity to boost computing power. According to a release from Rice, HEXAspec has developed breakthrough inorganic fillers that allow graphic processing units (GPUs) to use less water and electricity and generate less heat.

The technology has major implications for the future of computing with AI sustainably.

“With the huge scale of investment in new computing infrastructure, the problem of managing the heat produced by these GPUs and semiconductors has grown exponentially. We’re excited to use this award to further our material to meet the needs of existing and emerging industry partners and unlock a new era of computing,” HEXAspec co-founder Tianshu Zhai said in the release.

HEXAspec was founded by Zhai and Chen-Yang Lin, who both participated in the Rice Innovation Fellows program. A third co-founder, Jing Zhang, also worked as a postdoctoral researcher and a research scientist at Rice, according to HEXAspec's website.

The HEXASpec team won the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship's H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge in 2024. More recently, it also won this year's Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition during CERAWeek in the TEX-E student track, taking home $25,000.

"The grant from the NSF is a game-changer, accelerating the path to market for this transformative technology," Kyle Judah, executive director of Lilie, added in the release.

In addition to supporting Amanda Marciel's research, the funds will also go toward creating opportunities in soft matter research for undergraduates and underrepresented scientists at Rice University. Photo by Gustavo Raskosky/Rice University

Houston professor earns competitive NSF award, nearly $700,000 grant

science supported

An assistant professor at Rice University has won one of the highly competitive National Science Foundation's CAREER Awards.

The award grants $670,406 over five years to Amanda Marciel, the William Marsh Rice Trustee Chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering, to continue her research in designing branch elastomers that return to their original shape after being stretched, according to a statement from Rice. The research has applications in stretchable electronics and biomimetic tissues.

“My goal is to create a new paradigm for designing elastomers,” Marciel said in a statement. “The research has four aims: to determine the role of comb polymer topology in forming elastomers, understanding the effects of that topology on elastomer mechanics, characterizing its effects on elastomer structure and increasing the intellectual diversity in soft matter research.”

Marciel, who joined the faculty at Rice in 2019, is one of about 500 researchers to receive the NSF's CAREER Award each year. The award recognizes early-career faculty members who “have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization,” according to the NSF.

In addition to supporting Marciel's research, the funds will also go toward creating opportunities in soft matter research for undergraduates and underrepresented scientists. It will establish a new annual symposium called the Texas Soft Matter Meeting, where community college teachers can participate in a soft matter laboratory module and students in the Research Experiences for Undergrads program at Rice will present their summer research.

Recently, Rice also launched the new Rice Synthetic Biology Institute, which aims to strengthen the synthetic biology community across disciplines at the university. It is part of an $82 million investment the university put toward synthetic biology, neuroengineering and physical biology in 2018.

A fellow team or Rice researcher is also working on wearable haptic accessories. A member of the team was recently named to the 2024 cohort of Rice Innovation Fellows. Click here to learn more.

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12 winners named at CERAWeek clean tech pitch competition in Houston

top teams

Twelve teams from around the country, including several from Houston, took home top honors at this year's Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition at CERAWeek.

The fast-paced event, held March 25, put on by Rice Alliance, Houston Energy Transition Initiative and TEX-E, invited 36 industry startups and five Texas-based student teams focused on driving efficiency and advancements in the energy transition to present 3.5-minute pitches before investors and industry partners during CERAWeek's Agora program.

The competition is a qualifying event for the Startup World Cup, where teams compete for a $1 million investment prize.

PolyJoule won in the Track C competition and was named the overall winner of the pitch event. The Boston-based company will go on to compete in the Startup World Cup held this fall in San Francisco.

PolyJoule was spun out of MIT and is developing conductive polymer battery technology for energy storage.

Rice University's Resonant Thermal Systems won the second-place prize and $15,000 in the student track, known as TEX-E. The team's STREED solution converts high-salinity water into fresh water while recovering valuable minerals.

Teams from the University of Texas won first and second place in the TEX-E competition, bringing home $25,000 and $10,000, respectively. The student winners were:

Companies that pitched in the three industry tracts competed for non-monetary awards. Here are the companies named "most-promising" by the judges:

Track A | Industrial Efficiency & Decarbonization

Track B | Advanced Manufacturing, Materials, & Other Advanced Technologies

  • First: Licube, based in Houston
  • Second: ZettaJoule, based in Houston and Maryland
  • Third: Oleo

Track C | Innovations for Traditional Energy, Electricity, & the Grid

The teams at this year's Energy Venture Day have collectively raised $707 million in funding, according to Rice. They represent six countries and 12 states. See the full list of companies and investor groups that participated here.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Houston startup is off to the races with its innovative running shoes

running start

Despite Houston’s reputation as a sneaker town, there are few actual shoe companies headquartered in the Bayou City. One that is up and running is Veloci Running, an innovative enterprise that combines the founder’s history as a track runner for Rice University with the realities of running in a changing world.

Tyler Strothman started running cross country growing up in Wisconsin and Indiana before moving to Texas to attend Rice in 2020. Naturally, his college life was altered significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, Strothman contracted the virus, leading to pneumonia and causing him to consider other plans for his future.

One thing that stood out from Strothman’s running career was how bad his shoes fit.

“Traditional shoes narrowed in, cramped the front of my feet, and it was causing foot pain,” he said in a video interview. “But any other shoes that were shaped to better fit the natural foot shape were more barefoot (style)—they were more minimalist overall. And that was hurting my calf and Achilles. It was pulling on it, kind of like a rubber band.”

Strothman decided to start Veloci and went on to win the annual Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship's H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge in 2025. The win secured $50,000 in startup money, which Strothman used to immediately launch his new runner-centered shoe design with himself as the CEO at the age of 24.

Along for the jog was Strothman’s college friend, Austin Escamilla, who serves as chief operating officer. Escamilla believed in Strothman’s vision, but the project immediately ran into snags beyond Veloci’s control, particularly with manufacturing in Asia.

“It was quite a year to start a shoe business, especially dealing with tariffs and global economic trade tensions,” he said in the same video interview. “We've luckily had some really good partners and really solid advisors throughout the journey who've either done it or had some good feedback and advice. It certainly takes a village, but every day is different. So, it's fun to come into work every day and problem solve.”

The flagship Veloci shoe is the Ascent, which comes in both men’s and women’s sizes. It combines the wide toe cage that Strothman wanted with extra support cushion for a softer, easier run. They retail at $180. Strothman has personally been testing them for a year, noticing reduced lower leg pain when he runs.

At the same time, Veloci has attended to some of the more unique running problems in Houston and other hot, Southern states. A combination of heat and humidity makes for a very soggy shoe if not designed with such environments in mind. The Ascent is built to be very open and breathable, allowing hot air to flow and keeping sweat from building up. These various comfort improvements have made the Ascent Strothman’s favorite running shoe.

“I put on more pairs of this Veloci shoe than I have in my other running shoes in the last seven years,” he said

Currently, Veloci is still a very niche brand. Since the company launched last year, they’ve sold roughly 10,000 pairs. Those sales come either directly through their website or from specialty running stores, most of which are located around the Houston area, like Clear Creek Running Company in League City.

Building community around the shoe through these specialty retailers has been a prime marketing strategy. Part of the $50,000 grant went to a custom van that Veloci can take to various 5Ks, runs and events to get people interested in the brand. The personal touch has helped news of Veloci spread through the running world.

“We went to many run clubs throughout the last year,” said Escamillia. “We've been to pretty much every one of the major run clubs at least once or twice. Folks who try on the shoes, love them, become fans and post and repost…. The marketing side's been a lot of fun.”

Intuitive Machines lands $180M NASA contract for lunar delivery mission

to the moon

NASA has awarded Intuitive Machines a $180.4 million Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) award to deliver science and technology to the moon.

This is the fifth CLPS award the Houston spacetech company has received from NASA, according to a release. It will be the first mission to utilize Intuitive Machines' larger cargo lunar lander, Nova-D.

Known as IM-5, the mission is expected to deliver seven payloads to Mons Malapert, a ridge near the Lunar South Pole, which is a "compelling location for future communications, navigation, and surface infrastructure," according to the release.

“We believe our space infrastructure provides the scalability and flexibility needed to support an increased cadence of new Artemis missions and advance national objectives. This CLPS award accelerates our expansion efforts as we build, connect, and operate the systems powering that infrastructure,” Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, said in the release. “We look forward to working closely with NASA to deliver mission success on IM-5 and to provide sustained operations and persistent connectivity in the cislunar environment and across the solar system.”

The delivery will include the Australian Space Agency’s lunar rover, known as Roo-ver, and another lunar rover from Honeybee Robotics, a part of Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. Intuitive Machines will also deliver chemical analysis instruments, radiation detectors and other technologies, as well as a capsule named Sanctuary that shows examples of human achievements.

Intuitive Machines previously completed its IM-1 and IM-2 missions, which put the first commercial lunar lander on the moon and achieved the southernmost lunar landing, respectively.

Its IM-3 mission is expected to deliver international payloads to the moon's Reiner Gamma this year. It’s IM-4 mission, funded by a $116.9 million CLPS award, is expected to deliver six science and technology payloads to the Moon’s South Pole in 2027.

The company also announced a $175 million equity investment to fuel growth earlier this month.

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