Texas Instruments (TI) has once again chosen Rice University as one of its primary academic partners for research into digital signal processing (DSP). An inaugural member of TI's Leadership University program, Rice's DSP researchers have won a new three-year $1 million grant under the program.

Rice University engineers are collaborating with researchers at the Texas Heart Institute (THI) at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital and others to develop two heart-assist pumps that individually perform the function of the left and right ventricles.

Rather than mimic the pulse of the natural heart, the devices for this study pump blood continuously.

Chris Bronk, a fellow in technology, society and public policy at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, is quoted in a Channel 2 story on an insider hacking incident at the LifeGift Organ Donation Center. Appeared on KPRC-TV.

Computer Science's Moshe Vardi has been named this year's recipient of the SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award. Vardi, the Karen Ostrum George Professor in Computational Engineering and professor of computer science, was chosen for his contributions to the foundations of relational databases by establishing deep connections between database theory, mathematical logic, complexity theory and artificial intelligence.