TABLE TALK
Rice People Talking With Rice People over Lunch
Brought to you by Scientia, the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, and Cohen House
Table Talk is a new program that aims to have people at Rice get to know one another better over casual lunchtime conversation at Cohen House. The idea is simple: come to the Faculty Club, buy your own lunch downstairs, head up to Esther’s room by 12:15, and listen to carefully selected Rice faculty or staff members talk for 30 minutes about their research, scholarship or whatever they do that’s noteworthy. The speaker will fi nish by 12:45; then those who can stay may continue on with discussion. Here’s the point: We all have to eat lunch anyway, so why not do it in an environment that is pleasant, novel and informative?
The idea for this program grew from a conversation among friends bemoaning how even at small Rice University, most faculty do not know most other faculty fi rst hand and have little idea about their real work. The same holds for staff members who don’t know faculty or one another. Most of us have heard about someone at Rice – whom we have not yet met – accomplishing amazing things in their research and scholarship in areas such as bioengineering, history, political sciences, and architecture, or running a key center or program on campus.
We will strive to make this monthly program streamlined and enjoyable. Our speakers promise to be clear and accessible, knowing they are speaking about their work casually with intelligent laypeople, not talking shop with department colleagues. We pledge no long-winded introductions or closings; our goal is to make the most of the limited time each of us has.
Fall of 2008
March 11
Randall G. Hulet is the Fayez Sarofim Professor of Physics in the Physics and Astronomy Department. His work focuses on atoms at temperatures as low as a few nano-Kelvin, where strange and fascinating effects of quantum mechanics dominate http://atomcool.rice.edu/
April 14
James Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, with appointment in MEMS and in Computer Science. The founder of NanoComposites, Inc.,Tools for Industry, Inc., and NanoJtech Consultants, LLC, Tour's research areas include molecular electronics, nanotubes for health applications, chemical self-assembly, and more. http://www.jmtour.com/
May 5
Rebecca Richards-Kortum is the Stanley C. Moore Professor and Chair of the Department Bioengineering. Her research centers on non-invasive cancer detection technologies that use high-resolution, optical imaging; the use of fluorescent imaging agents for cancer detection; biophysical studies of the light-scattering properties of cells and tissues; and more. ( http://expert.rice.edu/ExpertDetail.cfm?EID=5128 ).
October 6
Matthias Henze is the Watt J. and Lilly G. Jackson Chair in Biblical Studies in Religious Studies. His research interests concern the Jewish literature of the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, including social histories of the people, their self-understanding, religious disputes, and the evolution of their ideas. He is also an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls. ( http://reli.rice.edu/rice_reli.cfm?a=cms,c,10,1 ).
November 4
Vicki L. Colvin Vicki Colvin is the Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Rice. She is also Director of Rice's Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN), which is funded by the National Science Foundation. She came to Rice in 1996, after receiving her B.S. from Stanford University in 1988 and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley 1994. Her research group studies the material properties of liquids and solids on nanometer length scales, including introducing new chemical approaches to forming uniform nanocrystals and highly ordered porous solids. She uses these materials as tools to answer fundamental questions about nature, such as the characteristic length scales in glasses and liquids. Her materials research may impact emerging technologies in areas as diverse as bioinformatics and photonics. Her recognitions include being named one of Discover Magazine's "Top 20 Scientists to Watch", an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. She was named a AAAS Fellow in 2007 and was named among the Best & Brightest by Esquire Magazine in 2007.
December 4
Michael O. Emerson is the Allyn & Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology and the Director of Rice's Center on Race, Religion, and Urban Life (CORRUL). Michael received his PhD in 1991 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His teaching and research interests lie in race and ethnic relations, religion, urban sociology, statistics, and methods. They focus most closely on the role of race in shaping social action in the US, especially on health, residential segregation, and on the institution of religion. His work on the relationship between religion and race began with thie book, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (Oxford University Press, 2000), which was named the Distinguished Book of the Year by the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. That book was followed by United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race (Oxford University Press, 2003) Against All Odds: The Struggle for Racial Integration in Religious Organizations (New York University Press, 2005) and People of the Dream: Multiracial Congregations in the United States (Princeton University Press, 2006). Among other awards, Emerson won the George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in teaching at Rice in 2006.
