Rice-Edinburgh Strategic Collaboration Awards (SCA)
Rice-Edinburgh 2024 SCA Award Winners
- Deterministic Fabrication of 3D/2D Perovskite for High-Efficient and Stable Solar Cells
- Found In Translation: Architecture’s Histories and Theories
- Digitally Twinned Biological Mechanical Structures as a Computational Precursor to the Standardized Design of Bioinspired Robots
- Social and Environmental Justice on Large Infrastructure Transitions: A comparative study of the nearshoring phenomenon in the U.S.- Mexico border and the just transitions in the United Kingdom.
- Entanglements of Science and Care within Health Research: Negotiating Autonomy, Responsibility, and Risk
- Strange Metals and Emergent Phases of Matter in Correlated Electron Materials
Deterministic Fabrication of 3D/2D Perovskite for High-Efficient and Stable Solar Cells
Metal halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have experienced tremendous attention in fundamental and applied research in the past decade, emerging as one of the most promising next-generation photovoltaic technologies with low CO2-eq footprint. .. Their commercial viability is hindered by stability challenges. This project aims at increasing the technological readiness level (TRL) of PSCs, focusing on the current greater challenge: lifespan, by construction of a 2D/3D heterostructure of perovskites in PSCs. Expand for full Project Abstract
Associate Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University
Lecturer in Photovoltaic Materials Chemistry, School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh
Found In Translation: Architecture’s Histories and Theories
This project re-examines the international networks and media through which ideas and concepts that shape the built environment travel. It focusses on the circulation and dissemination of architectural books, essays, and manifestos in the twentieth century. .. Attending to the idiosyncrasies of language, we will consider the impact of translation in the dissemination of architectural thought and assess how ideas were received, adopted, discussed, and challenged globally. By means of an international symposium that will bring together translators and scholars of architectural history concerned with questions of cultural exchange and the translation and transfer of ideas, we seek to stress the importance of a plurality of languages as well as the continuing need for widely accessible, and accurate translations to enrich an inclusive architectural historiography and discourse. The symposium will lead to the publication of a new volume that will make previously untranslated texts available to students, scholars, and an interested public. Expand for full Project Abstract
Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Rice University
Professor, School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Edinburgh
Digitally Twinned Biological Mechanical Structures as a Computational Precursor to the Standardized Design of Bioinspired Robots
Current bioinspired robotics is enabled through pre-existing actuation/control systems, and material/structural mechanisms. .. While this design philosophy is simple, a more direct transfer of knowledge from biology to robotic design would both broaden and speed-up our abilities to mimic key biological features and movements into robots. We propose to digitally twin anatomical, biomechanical and kinematic features of lizards to computational models for optimization, and then to digitally twin computationally optimized structures to additively manufactured robots. We will formalize a pipeline for information transfer directly from a biological source to a robotic construction, enabling swift design parameterization of materials, structures, joints, and kinematics, using a combination of algorithmic, analytical and numerical methods. This study will ascertain the feasibility of digitally twinning biology to engineering. We will conclude by physically demonstrating how a novel biomimetic robotic part can be designed and manufactured from a biological template, within the space of a few hours. Expand for full Project Abstract
Assistant Professor in BioSciences, Rice University
Reader in School of Engineering/ College of Science and Engineering, University of Edinburgh
Social and Environmental Justice on Large Infrastructure Transitions: A comparative study of the nearshoring phenomenon in the U.S.- Mexico border and the just transitions in the United Kingdom.
Social and environmental impacts have historically been given little consideration during the development of infrastructure projects... The evidence lies in the communities affected by the changes in the material and social landscape linked to these projects. Consequently, governments and private entities are now required to thoroughly identify and address potential impacts. Governments, businesses, civil society and organizations are all stakeholders in large development and infrastructure transitions. There is still a long way to address structural inequalities and poverty through an environmental justice approach as businesses enter the green economy transition, and companies are aiming to reduce emissions and increase efficiency by nearshoring their manufacturing practices to closer latitudes. This research project will explore and identify qualitative indicators, best practices and tools to better understand social and environmental burdens resulting from industrial developments in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and through the so-called green transition in the UK, aiming to find common ground. Expand for full Project Abstract
Director, Center for the United States and Mexico, Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy, Rice University
Lecturer in Energy, Society and Sustainability, Science Technology & Innovation Studies, University of Edinburgh
Entanglements of Science and Care within Health Research: Negotiating Autonomy, Responsibility, and Risk
Health research has long been a key means through which very unwell people and marginalised groups obtain otherwise inaccessible treatments. .. This is even recognised by law; e.g., with new moves towards post-trial access to drugs. While social scientists have charted patients’ experiences of research as care, the perspectives of biomedical practitioners themselves have received far less attention. Our project addresses this gap through close attention to the literature, interdisciplinary workshops, and our ongoing engagements with biomedical collaborators. Together, these activities will serve as a test bed for our ideas, and create new vantage points for considering the entanglements of science and care. Doing so extends existing scholarship within the fields of medical sociology and science and technology studies, while contributing to pressing debates within bioethics, law, and policy. This project exemplifies the shared commitment of UoE and Rice to scholarship that breaks down boundaries between disciplines, remaking conversations and practices. Expand for full Project Abstract
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Rice University
Professor of the Sociology of Science and Medicine, Edinburgh Medical School, University of Edinburgh
Strange Metals and Emergent Phases of Matter in Correlated Electron Materials
An intensive research in condensed matter physics over the past decades has focused on the materials with strong electron correlations and the exotic phases of matter that they are predicted to harbor, such as strange metals and unconventional superconductivity. .. Heavy fermion materials containing f-shell elements are a class of strongly correlated electron systems where strange metal behaviour has been observed, and in this proposal we shall aim to elucidate the origin of this phenomenon in a close-knit experimental and theoretical effort, focusing in particular on the non-Kramers ions in uranium based heavy fermion materials studied by Prof. Andrew Huxley at the University of Edinburgh. The Rice team will use computational modeling and compare the results with the magnetic and thermodynamic experimental data taken in Edinburgh. Expand for full Project Abstract
Associate Professor, Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
Professor School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh