Rice University’s Global Paris Center declares summer series of research conferences, workshops

The Rice Global Paris Center is expanding the reach and influence of Rice University’s world-class faculty and research through a rich and diverse array of events in Paris this summer.

The summer series includes a total of eight faculty research conferences and workshops, in addition to two Rice student summer intensive programs taking place from May to July. Over 500 participants from around the world will take part, launching the Rice Paris hub for innovative collaboration, research and inspired teaching.

“Creating relationships with students, faculty and researchers from across the world is very important to Rice. The Global Paris Center is an integral part of this process and the goals we have for global engagement and partnership.” Rice President Reginald DesRoches said. “The Global Paris Center’s expansion to include new programs, workshops and conferences this summer furthers the university’s ambition for the center to be a resource for innovative collaborations that spur connections beyond just academia.”

On May 22, Rice Global Paris will host its flagship summer workshop, the Rice-Europe Workshop on Future Directions in Spintronics and Quantum Materials. DesRoches will give opening remarks at the event, which is co-organized by Ramamoorthy Ramesh, vice president for research at Rice. Nobel laureates Albert Fert (Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/Thales) and Gerard Mourou (Ecole Polytechnique) will be plenary speakers.

“This is a topic in which Rice has a lot of strength, with over 25 faculty working in this field. It’s also a topic in which Europe, and particularly France, is a leader,” Ramesh said. “This will give Rice faculty an opportunity to interact with colleagues from Europe in an informal, intellectual setting.”

Ramesh and the Rice administration said this slate of summer programming fits into the Rice Global Paris Center’s mission of helping to raise the university’s profile internationally to match its status as an elite research university domestically.

“With leading faculty experts in nearly every academic discipline and innovative research in critical areas like energy and sustainability, computing and health care and medical innovation, Rice University is uniquely positioned to foster engagement within the European higher ed community and beyond,” he said.

“I have been impressed with the creativity and ambition with which Rice faculty have approached the unique opportunity that our first university-wide international center provides,” said Caroline Levander, vice president for global at Rice. “Faculty from across the university have begun to create a truly distinctive and highly differentiated reputation for Rice in Paris and beyond with the range and diversity of programs that they are leading.

Rice Global Paris occupies a historic building, the Hôtel de la Faye, located in the storied Le Marais neighborhood. Local French academic collaborators include faculty from the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris II Assas, CREST-Ecole polytechnique, Sciences Po and the University of Jena, among others.

Conferences and workshops will also feature broader higher education speakers and participants from leading European and U.S. academic institutions, such as the University of Cambridge, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, the London School of Economics and Political Science, McGill University and the European Institute of Oncology in Milan.

Levander said “one of our strategic goals for these Paris-based workshops is to enhance the global reputation of Rice broadly by bringing together thought leaders in a specific field to have a deep, intellectual discourse.” The biggest unsolved problems are global in scope, she said, so it makes sense for Rice to build international communities committed to furthering knowledge in those areas.