When a metal valve seat fails in an industrial pipeline, it can lead to a gas leak, a production shutdown and thousands of dollars in repairs. In the oil and gas industry, that small sealing ring carries a lot of responsibility. A senior capstone team within the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University spent the 2025–26 academic year trying to solve this issue.

As NASA sets its sights on a manned mission to Mars, it faces a deadly challenge: maintaining human health in zero gravity. Without the resistance of fighting against gravity, astronauts’ bodies lose both muscle and bone density at a dangerous rate. Their cardiovascular systems also decline dramatically faster than they would on Earth.The Aggienauts, a team of five seniors at Texas A&M University, have designed, machined and tested a device that could be the solution. As part of NASA’s Spring 2026 Design Challenge, the team received $300 and an open-ended challenge to address exercise in space.

As communities around the world grapple with aging infrastructure, water scarcity, emerging contaminants and the growing impacts of climate change, researchers at Rice University are advancing technologies aimed at making water systems more resilient, sustainable and adaptable. That work took center stage June 1-5 as Rice’s WaTER Institute hosted the 20th International Water Association Leading Edge Conference on Water and Wastewater Technologies, which brought together more than 270 industry professionals and academic researchers from 27 countries under the theme Resilient Water in a Changing World. The conference is widely regarded as one of the premier global forums for emerging water and wastewater technologies.

A Rice a student-founded startup is developing a drone-based system for sensitive medical supplies transport.

Experience Tennessee’s rich agricultural heritage firsthand at the 34th Milan No-Till Field Day, featuring all-new traditional skills demonstrations, an antique tractor show and parade and more.

revolutionary platform developed by researchers Joshua A. Pixley and Matthew Styles in the Bryan Dickinson lab that dramatically accelerates the discovery of custom protein binders. Recently published in PNAS, the PANCS-spec-Binders platform bypasses traditional, months-long biochemical bottlenecks by screening billions of synthetic variants simultaneously to isolate high-fidelity binders in just a matter of days. Utilizing an innovative process of simultaneous selection and counterselection, the platform achieves exceptional "isoform-level" precision—successfully distinguishing between nearly identical proteins, such as the cancer-linked KRAS mutation and its healthy counterpart HRAS. By eliminating the need for exhaustive secondary screenings, this breakthrough removes a major obstacle in chemical biology, opening new frontiers for the rapid development of highly targeted therapeutics and diagnostics.

Researchers have demonstrated that seaweed can be cultivated successfully at scale within offshore wind farms. By combining renewable energy production with seaweed farming, the same marine areas can produce food, feed and bio-based materials while helping remove nutrients from the sea. The technology is ready for deployment, but further growth now depends on developing markets, value chains and consumer demand for seaweed-based products.