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Features

FEATURES 1/28/25 11:03pm

Cracking the hack: Rice alum wins RP2350 Hacking Challenge

By Charlie Cruz

Identify vulnerabilities, test strategies and defeat the enemy: to the right minds, hacking is much like winning a battle. Duncan College alumnus Aedan Cullen recently made waves in the cybersecurity and hardware engineering communities by hacking one of Raspberry Pi’s most secure microcontrollers, earning a $20,000 prize in the process. Cullen’s achievement was unveiled at the RP2350 Hacking Challenge hosted by Raspberry Pi and Hextree.

FEATURES 1/21/25 10:36pm

Saba Feleke makes art you can’t scroll past

By Chi Pham

Outside Saba Feleke’s senior art studio, a large scroll painting hangs on the wall bearing the statement: “My 5-year plan is that a Bible-level miracle will happen.” The painting is a recreation of a screenshot of a post on Feleke’s Instagram, which itself is a screenshot of a Twitter post — only much larger, they said. It is part of a series of paintings created during Feleke’s summer residency at Project Row Houses through the Floyd Newsum Summer Studios Program.

FEATURES 1/14/25 10:15pm

Electives to fill your final credit hours

By Will Patel

No matter how long you spend perfecting your schedule, the urge to drop a class after syllabus week is inevitable. Whether you’re looking to drop the 8 a.m. that seemed like a good idea or the class with mandatory attendance, consider these three credit-hour electives with open spots to complete your schedule. 

FEATURES 12/3/24 10:39pm

Take a break with some dead days deeds

By Dia Gupta

With finals soon approaching, study sessions take up most of our day. Need a break from staring at a screen? Need to stand up and stretch before you fall asleep? Find some ways to spend the hours you simply can’t look at your notes anymore.

FEATURES 12/3/24 10:37pm

Buzzwords & belonging: DFs discuss O-Week

By Veronica Yang

Diversity, equity and inclusion are buzzwords that often get thrown around, but at Rice, students and administration work to bring them to life. It shows: Rice was recently rated fifteenth for most diverse colleges in America by Niche.  

FEATURES 12/3/24 10:35pm

Environmental student organizations talk politics, sustainability

By Noa Berz

Following the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Sunrise Rice co-founder Dyllan Lozano-Lomeli said she worries even more about the future of the Earth’s climate. Originally from Brownsville, Texas, Lozano-Lomeli said her passion for the environment was sparked in 2021 when she saw how the ‘Texas Freeze’ disproportionately impacted poor neighborhoods in her hometown. Now, living in Houston, she said she feels empowered to make a difference, both local and national. 

FEATURES 11/19/24 10:42pm

Nets Katz on skipping grades and solving problems

By Will Patel

Nets Katz has always liked numbers. As a child, he played with numbers in his head and quickly learned to add and multiply. Katz’s elementary school grouped students in classes based on test scores. However, Katz didn’t land on the top track.

FEATURES 11/12/24 10:03pm

The post on compost: The latest of composting at Rice

By Amelia Davis

Heavier than a commercial plane: Rice has composted one million pounds of food waste in total since May 2024 through the Moonshot Compost program. More bins were added due to demand at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, according to sustainability coordinator Kristianna Bowles. 

FEATURES 11/12/24 10:01pm

Robots do the brewing at CERĒS coffee shop

By Jeslyn Cho

It’s 8:45 a.m., and you walk into Rice Coffeehouse to find the line wrapped around the hallway of the student center. Begrudgingly, you skip out on your morning coffee and start estimating the perfect time to return when they might not be as busy. As you leave Chaus empty-handed, you realize you could go to Dandelion Cafe if you really wanted a morning drink. But that would mean going into debt. 

FEATURES 11/5/24 11:38pm

A peek at the polls: political participation through the years

By Moid Asif

Waiting on election results isn’t new to Rice students. The 1916 presidential election saw students waiting for the Houston Chronicle’s news for three days; when the results were finally announced, Woodrow Wilson’s reelection drew incoherent shouting, rah-rahs and a congregation in the quad.

FEATURES 11/5/24 11:13pm

Renee Wrysinski crafts circuits for change

By Nandini Dasari

As a child, Renee Wrysinski fit the standards for a future engineer to a tee, even getting an early start on model design by building Legos. Fifteen years later, she would win first place in Circuit Showdown, a televised engineering design competition for college students hosted by distributor Mouser Electronics and media company eeDesignIt. Wrysinski, who studies electrical and computer engineering, secured $10,000 and equipment donations for herself and the university.   

FEATURES 11/5/24 11:12pm

From Alabama to Bahia, Hordge-Freeman examines emotion

By Chi Pham

One night in Brazil, Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman was driving back from a late dinner with friends when a military police officer stopped her and ordered her out of her car. As he aimed a rifle at the side of her head, she said she remembers standing there, shaking, unable to hear anything but his voice — not even her friends shouting at her. This anecdote is one of many Hordge-Freeman shares in her first book “The Color of Love,” which examines how racial hierarchies are reproduced and challenged in Black Brazilian families.

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