Rice Advanced Materials Institute (RAMI)

Congratulations to Dr. Karen Lozano on receiving American Chemical Society National Award for Encouraging Disadvantaged Students into the Chemical Sciences. Dr. Lozano is the Department Chair of Materials Science and NanoEngineering and a Rice Advanced Materials Institute (RAMI) affiliate member. 🦉

Congratulations to Lea Nienhaus on receiving the 2025 American Chemical Society Energy Lectureship Outstanding Early Career Award. Dr. Nienhaus, a Rice Advanced Materials Institute (RAMI) fellow, was recognized for remarkable contributions to the field of halide perovskite-sensitized upconversion, an area with significant potential for solar energy applications. 🦉

From fashion design to cutting-edge engineering: Vanessa Sanchez's career journey is a testament to the power of interdisciplinary research. At Rice University, her texlab explores the intersections of materials science, manufacturing, and robotics. Her experiences as a materials science and mechanical engineering Ph.D. student at SEAS, a postdoc at Stanford, and researcher at Meta's Reality Labs equipped her with the skills and vision to create innovative solutions. “My lab works between manufacturing, materials and robotics,” Sanchez said. “Understanding the intersections between different fields is something central to my work. I don’t think I’d be here without my Harvard experience. It really changed the way I think about science, and what problems I want to work on.”

Opening RAMI to the Community 🦉 The Rice Advanced Materials Institute (RAMI) & RAMI-affiliated labs were featured as part of the Rice University School of Engineering and Computing 50th anniversary celebration lab tours to showcase the spirit of innovation at Rice University.

The O'Connor Building for Engineering & Science featured at the Rice University School of Engineering and Computing 50th anniversary drone spectacle. 🦉

Congressman Jake Ellzey visited Rice University last week, touring several Rice Advanced Materials Institute (RAMI) and RAMI-affiliated labs as part of his campus visit organized by the Rice Defense Research Advancement (DRA) office. We appreciated the opportunity to showcase how RAMI researchers are advancing materials innovation in energy, critical minerals and national security. Thank you, Congressman, for taking the time to engage with our labs and researchers! 🦉

Dr. Laurent Bellaiche at Rice University on designing new materials and phenomena from AB-initio approaches.

We were honored to host Dr. Laurent Bellaiche from the University of Arkansas at Rice University for an insightful discussion on Designing New Materials and Phenomena from Ab-Initio Approaches. Dr. Laurent Bellaiche discussed advancements in multifunctional materials with optimized properties such as strong piezoelectricity, large electro-optic conversion, and ultrahigh energy efficiency. He explored a proposed method to induce the elusive quantum spin liquid state in 2D magnets and highlighted the potential of complex ferroelectric bulks and nanostructures to exhibit hidden states with enhanced properties, promising for ultrafast neuromorphic computing when exposed to THz electric field pulses. Additionally, he examined the occurrence of unusual phenomena when twisted light interacts with ferroelectrics. 🦉

🚧 Construction is complete, and the Nienhaus Group is ready to move into their new lab and begin setup. The Nienhaus Research Group focuses on light matter interactions and photon upconversion. Research is highly interdisciplinary combining a wide variety of chemical and physical methods, materials development and synthesis & engineering approaches.  Lea Nienhaus is a Rice Advanced Materials Institute (RAMI) Fellow and Associate Professor of Chemistry at Rice University.

Join us for a lecture by Dr. Laurent Bellaiche in O'Connor 510 from 11:00 - 12:00 PM.