Zoghbi slated for commencement

By Hongtao Hu     4/1/25 10:18pm

Huda Zoghbi was announced to be the speaker for Rice’s 112th commencement March 26. Zoghbi is a professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine.

In an email announcing Zoghbi as the commencement speaker, President Reggie DesRoches said that Zoghbi’s engagement with Rice’s academics and research reflects “her commitment to advancing knowledge and mentoring future generations.”

Born in Lebanon, Zoghbi moved to the United States following the outbreak of civil war in 1975. She completed her residency in pediatric neurology at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital.

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When DesRoches reached out to her, Zoghbi said that she was both surprised and honored. 

“I was thinking, maybe he should get some president or something,” Zoghbi said. “But he said, ‘No, we really want you,’ and so I was really touched.”

Zoghbi’s most prominent work was finding the genetic basis of Rett syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that primarily affects young girls and leads to progressive motor skill and language loss. Her work has also concerned other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

A Rice trustee emerita, Zoghbi is also the founding director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher.

“I’ve had Rice students in my lab many, many times,” Zoghbi said. “One side of the coin is having students from Rice coming in as undergrad or Ph.D. students or postdocs and so on. The other side of the coin is some of my own graduates, who are now faculty members at Rice.”

Natalie Byron, a research assistant in Zoghbi’s lab, said she was enthused when Zoghbi was announced as a commencement speaker — especially since Byron is graduating this May. 

“I really got to see [her passion for science] over the last three years,” said Byron, a Hanszen College senior. “She really loves her job and is so passionate about it, and that rubbed off on me and everyone, and made me want to have a scientific research aspect in my future career.

An assistant professor in biosciences at Rice, Laura Lavery worked with Zoghbi as a postdoctoral fellow from 2014 to 2022.

“Huda really pushed us to be the best that we could be,” Lavery said. “She seems to have an endless capacity for caring.”

Byron and Lavery praised Zoghbi’s commitment to improving their research through journal clubs, where her lab team’s members would individually present and discuss a research journal.

“It made us better researchers,” Lavery said. “We were encouraged to engage with others. You don’t necessarily always have that built into your scientific training, and I think by having that set time every week to do that it helped us practice and stay up to date on the scientific literature.”

Lavery said that Zoghbi is well-known and respected in the medical field.

“Here in Houston, she’s a pillar of the research community, and a very inspiring and well known leader,” Lavery said. “[I’m] deeply thankful and grateful that she is who she is, and that she chose to be here. The world, the United States, and our community — everybody is better because of her.”

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