Richards-Kortum first woman appointed to National Academy of Engineering

By Jane Lee     3/20/08 7:00pm

This February, bioengineering chair and professor Rebecca Richards-Kortum received one of the highest professional distinctions in engineering when she was selected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Richards-Kortum is the first woman and the youngest of the 15 faculty members from Rice to be elected to the NAE. The NAE, a private institution with 2,227 U.S. members and 194 foreign associates, serves to aid the government in researching engineering issues. Richards-Kortum said committees within the NAE provide advice to policy makers on scientific and technical issues.

Candidates for membership need a nomination from one academy member and support from three others to be considered for the NAE. According to the NAE Web site, Richards-Kortum was selected because of her research on diagnosis and treatment of cancer in women and for leadership in bioengineering education and global health initiatives.

Richards-Kortum came to Rice in 2005, after a 15-year stint as bioengineering professor and researcher at the University of Texas at Austin.

---

---

Richards-Kortum said her cancer-detection research focus emerged out of her concern for patients with advanced cancer.

"It's so difficult to treat advanced cancer, and you know all of the therapies have terrible side effects," Richards-Kortum said. "They're not very effective, and they're very expensive. And if we can detect either pre-cancerous changes, or we can detect cancer at a very early stage, then it's much more likely to be curable with very minimal side effects and in a cheap way."

Richards-Kortum said her cancer research sparked her interest in establishing the global health technologies minor last fall. She said her favorite class to teach is BIOE 260: Introduction to Global Health Issues, a requirement for the global health technologies minor, in which student groups must solve real-life challenges from various health care organizations.

Outside of the classroom, Richards-Kortum also strives to involve undergraduates in global-health problem solving. In 2006, she was awarded $2.2 million to create the Beyond Traditional Borders program at Rice that challenges students to come up with solutions that benefit millions in developing countries.

Through this program, seven undergraduates spent their summer working in Africa for two months studying health issues.

"One of the best times at Rice was this past summer when I got to travel to sub-Saharan Africa to visit my students doing internships, and seeing the impact they had made," Richards-Kortum said.

She said she has confidence that Rice undergraduates can impact global health.

"What really struck me was that there are real impediments to people getting good healthcare that undergraduates could solve," Richards-Kortum said. "Why not put all the talent and energy and enthusiasm of students into that?"

Richards-Kortum is currently working on "Rice 360ø: Technology Solutions for World Health," a new Rice initiative to prevent disease in vulnerable populations, and will continue to teach BIOE 260 and BIOE 301: Bioengineering and World Health next spring.

---