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5/15/2009

Rice's DOD funding this decade tops $100 million
Recent grant wins top all Texas' top-tier research universities

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

Rice is challenging Texans' notion that bigger is better, particularly when it comes to security-related research. Rice led Texas' top-tier research universities this month in awards from the Department of Defense's Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program, winning new grants worth more than $9 million, or about 3.5 percent of total MURI funding awarded this year.

"This funding will help Rice continue its leadership in researching and developing technology to improve future security capabilities and surveillance systems and better ensure our nation’s safety," said Sen. John Cornyn. "The important work being done at Rice is a source of pride for Texas."

The MURI awards (see sidebar) come in areas where the university already has notable research strengths -- computation, digital signal processing, nanotechnology, quantum magnetism and high-temperature superconductivity -- and they highlight Rice's growing role as one of the state's leading centers for security-related research.

"The depth of our offering on security-related research covers everything from the evolution of influenza and new treatments for breast cancer to improved chemical safety and atomic physics," said Sallie Keller-McNulty, dean of Rice's George R. Brown School of Engineering. "It's an incredibly diverse portfolio, probably as diverse as our nondefense research."

Keller-McNulty, who left the Los Alamos National Laboratory to join Rice in 2005, said Rice's breadth of security-related research was an initial surprise, particularly given the university's size. With 5,339 students, Rice is the second-smallest member of the Association of American Universities, an organization representing the nation's top 62 research universities.

Vision for the Second Century
What is Rice University planning for the next century? Find out here George R. Brown School of Engineering
Got a knack for innovation? Learn how to refine your skills at Rice Wiess School of Natural Sciences
Discover what innovations are being made at Rice "If you do a per capita adjustment on the amount of funding we receive per faculty member, I'm sure we are competitive, not only in Texas but across the nation," she said.

Rice certainly held its own against Texas' other top-tier research universities in the recent competition for MURI funding. Rice won the most awards of any other Texas university, despite having only about one-tenth the number of students as the University of Texas at Austin or Texas A&M University, the state's other MURI winners.

"Diversifying Rice’s portfolio of research sponsors is a key objective of the university's Vision for the Second Century," said James Coleman, Rice’s vice provost for research. "With that in mind, we're expending a great deal of effort on basic research partnerships between our faculty and the Department of Defense. Rice's success in this year’s MURI competition and our overall DOD success in recent years are a testament to these strategic efforts."

The MURI funding is the latest in a series of significant DOD awards to Rice faculty. Rice researchers have landed more than $100 million in research funding from DOD this decade, and 2009 is Rice's best yet, due largely to a $16 million award for computer compiler research from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in April.

"The key to Rice's success in both this area and many others is the quality of our faculty," said Dan Carson, dean of Rice's Wiess School of Natural Sciences. "That's one reason you see such a wide array of research getting DOD funding here: We have great faculty across the board."

	Rice is the lead institution on a $6.3 million MURI project that aims to build upon advances in sensor design, signal processing, communications and robotics by developing new techniques for "opportunistic sensing." The project, which is funded by the Army Research Office, is expected to directly impact the design of future ground and aerial surveillance systems, making them more powerful, more reliable and better able to distinguish friend from foe. The principal investigator on the project is Richard Baraniuk, Rice's Victor E. Cameron Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Rice co-principal investigators include Lydia Kavraki, the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science and professor of bioengineering; Wotao Yin, assistant professor of computational and applied mathematics; and Volkan Cevher, research scientist in electrical and computer engineering. Member institutions include the University of Maryland--College Park, the University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign, Yale University, Duke University and the University of California--Los Angeles. Rice is a member institution on two MURI projects. Pulickel Ajayan, the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, will lead Rice's $2.2 million effort to forge new techniques for creating graphene nanodevices. The lead institution for the project, which is funded by the Office of Naval Research, is the University of California--Berkeley. Rice's co-principal investigators include James Tour, the Chao Professor of Chemistry and professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science, and Boris Yakobson, professor in mechanical engineering and materials science and of chemistry. Emilia Morosan, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, is leading Rice's $1 million effort to create new and better high-temperature superconductors. The project is sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and led by Stanford University. All MURI award amounts are subject to negotiation between the academic institutions and the Department of Defense research offices making the awards. The five-year grants resulted from a highly competitive program in which the department received more than 150 proposals.