Application Process for Rice Undergraduate Students

To apply, submit the following application documents online at 12twenty (12twenty account needed; posting forthcoming).

• Student Application Form
• Resume
• Unofficial Transcript
• Project-Specific Paragraph for each project to which you are applying

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Research Projects for Academic Year 2025-26

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Cameron Dezen Hammon (Rice University)

Project Title
Literary Disparities: A Discussion Based Podcast on Underrepresented Women’s Reproductive Health Issues in Literature, Art, and Culture

Project Description
Literary Disparities will look at the cultural invisibility of women’s reproductive health struggles in everything from PCOS and endometriosis to perimenopause and menopause and asks if creative writing / literary production can make the invisible visible. The podcast will be both interview and conversation based and will feature conversations with reproductive justice advocates, medical professionals, authors, artists, and poets at Rice, as well as nationwide.

Tasks the student would be expected to perform
-Conduct research into possible guests and topics
-Assist in reaching out to potential podcast guests
-Planning and coordinating the recording and filming of episodes
-Promoting the podcast to the Rice community and beyond

Specific skills or training the student should have before beginning the project
Students should be comfortable with social media promotion and familiar with podcasting-- though experience isn't necessary.

Onboarding
If selected, the student must show evidence of completion of specific CITI IRB training modules. Details will be included in acceptance letter.

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Vanessa Sanchez (Rice University)

Project Title
Age, Disability, and Human-Centered Dressing Assistance

Project Description
Wearable robotic garments that change shape or deliver assistive forces to the body—while remaining lightweight, comfortable, and resembling everyday clothing—offer a promising pathway to support individuals who may not have access to full-time caregivers. These systems, which can integrate soft actuation delivered in textile embodiments, have the potential to assist with essential activities of daily living (ADLs), such as dressing. However, despite increasing technological capabilities in textile-based wearable robots, there is limited understanding of how success in dressing assistance is defined considering the needs of various populations. Cultural, generational, and disability-specific perspectives all shape what is considered meaningful support—whether that is speed, independence, comfort, or personal expression. Without clearly defined metrics rooted in lived experience, it becomes difficult to evaluate or improve wearable systems in ways that genuinely serve users. This student project will investigate how different communities define successful dressing assistance, and will propose a set of human-centered design goals and evaluation frameworks that center user values to accelerate the development and adoption of wearable robotics for accessible care.

Tasks the student would be expected to perform
-Conduct a literature review focused on dressing as an activity of daily living across varied populations, with attention to age groups and types of disability as defined in the clinical literature. This includes reviewing studies on dressing challenges and assistance needs, types of clothing and their influence on dressing independence, and reported metrics of success for assistive technologies for dressing.
-Identify population-specific differences from the literature review, highlight current gaps, and develop design and evaluation recommendations for wearable robotic systems grounded in both age-group and disability-specific considerations.
-Synthesize insights into reports and data visualizations to communicate key findings and guide future research and device design directions.

Specific skills or training the student should have before beginning the project
Prior experience conducting literature reviews, especially in human-centered design, rehabilitation, or health-related fields, is helpful but not required. Strong communication and critical thinking skills will support success in researching literature, synthesizing insights, and developing design recommendations.

Onboarding
If selected, the student must show evidence of completion of specific CITI IRB training modules. Details will be included in acceptance letter. In addition, the student will need to complete Rice University lab safety training and lab-specific safety training for our group.

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Carly Thomsen (Rice University)

Project Title
The Aesthetics of Reproduction

Project Description
This project considers how centering aesthetics might shift our understandings of and approaches to reproductive justice. While scholars have talked at length about reproductive health, rights, and justice in terms of ethics, politics, religion, public health, media, and history, very little work on reproduction focuses specifically on aesthetics. I am interested in how a focus on aesthetics can help us develop new epistemological and political possibilities for contemporary conversations about reproductive justice. Questions this work takes up include: How might focusing on aesthetics (rather than, say, narrative content) expand prior feminist and queer analyses of cultural texts about reproductive health and medicine? What can happen to our art, knowledge, and advocacy when creating cultural texts becomes our way of doing something politically? What are the benefits and limits of thinking about resistance in terms of aesthetics? This project is inspired by a question that renowned feminist artist Carmen Winant asks in Notes on Fundamental Joy: Does hope have an aesthetic? (Winant, 2019).

Students will contribute to the project in various ways: reviewing literature helpful for thinking about reproductive health, rights, and justice through the lens of aesthetics; building an electronic archive of cultural texts that focus on reproductive health and medicine so that we can examine them in terms of aesthetics, ultimately developing a typology of reproductive justice aesthetics; and creating original pieces of media that synthesize our findings and can circulate via social media. This project is deeply informed by and intends to contribute to the medical humanities through focusing on cultural representations of reproductive health, medicine, rights, and justice.

Tasks the student would be expected to perform
-Reviewing literature helpful for thinking about reproductive health, rights, and justice through the lens of aesthetics;
-Building an electronic archive of cultural texts that focus on reproductive health and medicine so that we can examine them in terms of aesthetics, ultimately developing a typology of reproductive justice aesthetics;
-Creating original pieces of media that synthesize our findings and can circulate via social media.

Specific skills or training the student should have before beginning the project
Required skills: Familiarity with social media
Preferred skills: Familiarity with film editing and conducting literature reviews

Onboarding
If selected, the student must show evidence of completion of specific CITI IRB training modules. Details will be included in acceptance letter.

Faculty Mentors: Drs. Natasha Afonso and BA White (Texas Children's Hospital)

Project Title
Conflict in Critical Care: Narrative Perspectives and Conflict Mode Analysis

Project Description
In the high-stakes environment of the intensive care unit (ICU), conflict is a common part of daily practice. Critical care staff regularly navigate emotionally charged interactions with families and colleagues while managing life-or-death decisions under pressure.

This project uses a narrative medicine approach combined with a conflict management mode survey to explore how ICU professionals manage interpersonal conflict. Participants first complete the survey to identify their personal conflict styles, then share stories of real-life tension — focusing on what happened, how they responded, and what helped.

By analyzing these stories through both narrative and conflict style lenses, the project uncovers practical strategies for conflict resolution in critical care settings. It highlights how clinicians adapt, communicate, and collaborate in moments of crisis, offering insight into the emotional and interpersonal skills that support effective care.

Tasks the student would be expected to perform
-Conduct background literature review related to conflict in healthcare environments.
-Develop semi-structured interviews
-Administer survey and conduct in-depth interviews with clinicians to describe conflict situations, what happened and what worked to provide qualitative data and practical insights.
-Transcribe and analyze interviews to identify themes.

Specific skills or training the student should have before beginning the project
Not required, but research and interviewing experience would be beneficial.

Onboarding
If selected, the student must show evidence of completion of specific CITI IRB training modules. Details will be included in acceptance letter. In addition, the student will need to complete badging paperwork, background check, and HIPAA training for Texas Children’s Hospital.

Offsite Location
Texas Children's Hospital

Faculty Mentors: Drs. Ashish Ankola, Kriti Puri, Natasha Afonso (Texas Children's Hospital)

Project Title
Navigating Life in the Hospital with Heart Failure on an Implantable Ventricular Assist Device

Project Description
This project explores the experience of living with a Berlin EXCOR Heart Ventricular Assist Device (VAD), focusing on the emotional, psychological and social implications for patients and their families who rely on this life-saving technology. This project will investigate the complexities of adapting to a life with a VAD, examining the intersection of medical technology with the patient and family experience while awaiting heart transplant.
The Berlin EXCOR VAD is used to support the heart and circulation in children with severe heart failure while awaiting heart transplantation in the hospital. It incorporates cannulas implanted by open heart surgery, and the pump located external to the patient, with a mobile controller with a short battery life needing connection to wall power (paracorporeal VAD). These devices provide clinical stability however necessitates the patients stay in the hospital while on support. While these devices can improve survival rates for these patients, they also introduce profound challenges, both physical and emotional. This project will explore these challenges and document the patient and family narratives in adapting to the physical, social and emotional aspects of life with a paracorporeal VAD.

Tasks the student would be expected to perform
-Conduct literature review related to patient and family experience of patients with paracorporeal VAD technology.
-Develop semi-structured interview to explore the experience of patients on paracorporeal VAD support and their family members, emotional responses, and daily challenges.
-Conduct in-depth Interviews with patients on paracorporeal VAD support and their family members to focus on themes such as fear of complications, impact on relationships, and the social and financial impact of living in the hospital while awaiting heart transplant.
-Transcribe and analyze interviews to identify themes.

Specific skills or training the student should have before beginning the project
Not required, but research and interviewing experience would be beneficial.

Onboarding
If selected, the student must show evidence of completion of specific CITI IRB training modules. Details will be included in acceptance letter. In addition, the student will need to complete badging paperwork, background check, and HIPAA training for Texas Children’s Hospital.

Offsite Location
Texas Children's Hospital

Faculty Mentors: Drs. Paul Checchia, Gitanjali Indramohan, Natasha Afonso (Texas Children's Hospital)

Project Title
Sedation, Pain and Delirium in the Pediatric ICU: A Nursing Perspective

Project Description
Critically ill children often require intubation and mechanical ventilation due to cardiac, respiratory or multiorgan failure. The invasive nature of ICU care- including the presence of tubes, lines and the high-stress environment can lead to significant pain, fear, and anxiety necessitating the use of continuous sedative, analgesic and anxiolytic infusions. Managing these medications requires a careful balance between achieving comfort and limiting adverse effects such as drug tolerance, withdrawal, and extended ICU stays.

To support this balance, many institutions, including ours, implement standardized sedation and pain management protocols. These include frequent nursing assessments using validated tools to measure pain and sedation such as State Behavioral Scale (SBS) and COMFORT-B scale. Despite the use of validated objective measures to manage sedation/pain, we would like to explore the element of subjectivity related to nursing experience and background on sedation and analgesia practices in the ICU.

Tasks the student would be expected to perform
-Conduct literature review on nursing and provider/clinician/physician sedation practices in the pediatric ICU
-Development of semi-structured interview to explore nursing perspective of sedation/pain/delirium in the ICU and evaluate practice of sedation/pain management
-Interview bedside RNs using the questionnaire to identify pain, sedation and delirium management practices in mechanically ventilated patients in the ICU
-Transcribe and analyze the interviews to identify themes related to management of pain/sedation/delirium, identify barriers to using tools of assessment for the same and explore the prevalence of use of non-pharmacologic measures.
-Determine if nursing experience or background (i.e. race, primary unit) have a correlation on specific sedation practices

Onboarding
If selected, the student must show evidence of completion of specific CITI IRB training modules. Details will be included in acceptance letter. In addition, the student will need to complete badging paperwork, background check, and HIPAA training for Texas Children’s Hospital.

Offsite Location
Texas Children's Hospital

Faculty Mentors: Drs. Chetna Pande and Natasha Afonso (Texas Children's Hospital)

Project Title
Parental Mental Health in Families of Children Hospitalized with Congenital Heart Disease

Project Description
The parents of children hospitalized with congenital heart disease (CHD) face extraordinary psychological challenges as they navigate prolonged hospitalizations, often during critical surgical interventions. These parents experience a tumultuous journey, marked by fleeting moments of hope and frequent setbacks, which has been described as an “emotional rollercoaster”. With limited access to their usual support systems and separated from their homes and other children, caregivers often face feelings of isolation, anxiety and profound uncertainty. The psychological toll of their child’s hospitalization frequently manifests as heightened stress, fear and deterioration in their overall quality of life.

This group of parents reports significant levels of psychological distress, including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress, which not only affects their well-being but also has been shown to have long term consequences for their child’s neurodevelopmental outcomes. Parental mental health is inextricably linked to the emotional and developmental trajectory of children with CHD, making it critical to understand the impact of these caregiving experiences in greater depth.

This mixed methods study, utilizing semi-structured qualitative interviews, seeks to explore the experiences and struggles of parents during their child’s hospitalization for CHD. Our goal is to uncover the specific emotional, psychological and social challenges they face in order to develop targeted interventions that can better support parents throughout this difficult period. By enhancing parental mental health, we aim to mitigate the adverse effects on child neurodevelopment, improving outcomes for both child and the family as a whole.

Tasks the student would be expected to perform
-Develop and conduct semi structured interviews with parents/caregivers of children hospitalized with CHD
-Transcribe and analyze the interviews to identify themes
-Give standardized mental health screenings to parents/caregivers

Specific skills or training the student should have before beginning the project
None required, but fluency in a language other than English would be beneficial.

Onboarding
If selected, the student must show evidence of completion of specific CITI IRB training modules. Details will be included in acceptance letter. In addition, the student will need to complete badging paperwork, background check, and HIPAA training for Texas Children’s Hospital.

Offsite Location
Texas Children's Hospital

Faculty Mentors: Drs. Rocky Tsang, Ashish Ankola, Priya Bhat (Texas Children's Hospital)

Project Title
One Heart, Many Stories: Life with a Single Ventricle

Project Description
Children and adults living with single ventricle physiology often undergo multiple surgeries, prolonged hospitalizations, and lifelong uncertainty. Their families become caregivers, advocates, and emotional anchors — all while navigating fear, hope, and the pressure of medical decision-making. This project explores the emotional, narrative, and relational experience of living with a single ventricle heart through the voices of those most affected. This project allows us to document the stories behind the statistics and creates space for families to share their voice with the community.

Tasks the student would be expected to perform
-Conduct background literature review related to the experience of living with congenital heart disease, especially related to single ventricle patients.
-Develop and conduct semi-structured interviews to explore the emotional stress, chronic uncertainty, and evolving relationship with the medical system.
-Transcribe and analyze interviews to identify themes.

Specific skills or training the student should have before beginning the project
Research experience or interviewing skills is helpful, but not required

Onboarding
If selected, the student must show evidence of completion of specific CITI IRB training modules. Details will be included in acceptance letter. In addition, the student will need to complete badging paperwork, background check, and HIPAA training for Texas Children’s Hospital.

Offsite Location
Texas Children's Hospital