Rice University News

Universities Settle Financial-Aid Antitrust Lawsuit for $166M

Dartmouth, Northwestern, Rice and Vanderbilt universities have agreed to pay a combined $166 million to resolve claims that they favored wealthy student applicants, pushing total settlements in a federal antitrust lawsuit over college financial aid practices to $284 million. Lawyers …

Rice University Allocates $33M to Settle Antitrust Lawsuit Over Financial Aid Scheme

Rice University has set aside $33.75 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed against 17 prestigious private universities across the country accused of illegally running a scheme that limited the amount of financial aid given to students, according to the …

Researchers Create Extreme Weather Early Warning System from ‘Obsolete’ Tool

Rice University engineers have created a deep learning computer system that taught itself to accurately predict extreme weather events, like heat waves, up to five days in advance using minimal information about current weather conditions. Ironically, Rice’s self-learning “capsule neural …

Rice U. Says Its Hurricane Plan for Houston Better Than $20B Coastal Barrier

For about a decade, two of Texas’ top universities have pushed dueling plans to protect the Houston-Galveston region from hurricanes. A concept championed by Texas A&M University at Galveston appears to be winning out as the federal and state governments …

Researchers: FEMA’s Houston Flood Maps Outdated Long Before Harvey

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood plain maps for parts of southeastern Houston were woefully out-of-date long before Hurricane Harvey ravaged the Texas coast, a new study suggests. Researchers at Rice University and Texas A&M University at Galveston studied one …