World Cup tourists fall in love with middle America — raving about Waffle House at 1 a.m., Buc-ee's gas stations, and strangers driving them to stadiums in the rain. Oxford Economics expects 1.24 million international visitors for the tournament, and their viral posts are showcasing a side of the country most foreign media never covers.

Para ti, papá.

Please apply (or tell your postdocs and senior grads to apply!) for our seminar series. It's a good opportunity for future faculty to make connections, meet potential student or postdoc recruits, and get feedback on the talks and 1:1s. The deadline is June 30th.

Mission complete ❤️❤️❤️

Florida to California via the Moon is a domestic flight until another country proves otherwise

Our latest paper appeared today as a cover (inside front) feature article in Advanced Functional Materials, titled “A Bioresorbable Neural Interface for On-Demand Thermal Pain Block.” The focus is on a bioresorbable, implantable form of neural electronics that supports precisely controlled, reversible thermal modulation to achieve action potential block in peripheral nerves for acute pain management. The integration of a microscale heater–sensor pair in a cuff geometry enables dynamic and on-demand regulation of localized Joule heating with real-time feedback control, maintaining safe therapeutic temperatures. Wireless operation through a resorbable receiving coil with a voltage-regulating component ensures stable power transfer and reliable performance, establishing a practical route toward untethered and clinically deployable operation. The broader significance lies in demonstrating that heat, rather than electricity, can serve as a potentially safe and reversible, non-pharmacological mechanism for neuromodulation, thereby opening new directions for bioresorbable device design in pain control, post-surgical recovery, and other transient therapeutic interventions. As with much of our work in this area, the project involved a highly collaborative effort, in this case originally started by Prof. Geumbee Lee (former postdoc, now on the faculty at Kyungpook National University) and subsequently led by Dr. Jeonghwan Park (postdoc in the group), Dr. @HakYoung_Ahn (postdoc in the group), Prof. Minho Seong (former postdoc, now on the faculty at @PusanUni) and Dr. Taehoon Kim (postdoc in the group) for experimental work; by Yulin Zhou (PhD student with Prof. @AvilaROAD) for modeling efforts; and by Yamen Xu (former MS student in the group, and PhD student with Prof. Matthew MacEwan) for animal model evaluations. Per the full author list, many other people also contributed in important ways. For senior collaborators, we thank Prof. @AvilaROAD (former co-mentored PhD student with Prof. Yonggang Huang, now on the faculty at @RiceUniversity) for modeling and Prof. Matthew MacEwan (Washington University in St. Louis medical school) and Prof. Wilson Z. Ray (Washington University in St. Louis medical school) for medical insights and animal work.

Rice engineers joined forces with physicians at the @MDAndersonNews to give surgeons a powerful new patient-specific way to approach pelvic cancer surgeries using a digital model of the reconstructed pelvis. news.rice.edu/news/2025/rice…

A new @RiceMECH and @MDAndersonNews collaboration builds patient-specific models to guide complex pelvic cancer surgeries. news.rice.edu/news/2025/rice…

Prof. Raudel Avila @AvilaROAD @RiceMECH visited us and gave an excellent seminar on modelling of stretchable electronics. 米国ライス大学のAvila先生が松久研を訪れ、伸縮性エレクトロニクスのモデリング技術について講演してくださいました。 Supported by @JST_ASPIRE

Yoshinobu Yamamoto with the gutsiest pitching performance ever. World Series G2: 9 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 8 K, W World Series G6: 6 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 6 K, W World Series G7: 2.2 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 1 K, W He is the undisputed World Series MVP. He is the best pitcher on the planet.

How can you not love baseball man

Extra innings in Game 7 of the World Series. As it should be for a series like this.

There were over 600 hundred pitches thrown in this 18 inning World Series thriller before the Freddie Freeman walk off HR

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

🎉 Notable achievements this month for @RiceNeuro core member and @RiceMECH Department Chair, Marcie O'Malley. Dr. O'Malley traveled to Japan to accept the 11th #Nagamori Award top prize from the Nagamori Foundation, and followed this up by being elected as an IAMBE fellow! 🎉

🗣️ @RiceMECH Seminar Series: "Harnessing unconventional column and shell buckling for functional architected materials" by Dr. Lihua Jin from UCLA! 📅 Wed, Sept 10 | 3:30-4:30pm | Maxfield Hall 251 events.rice.edu/event/406511…

Published today in the journal Device, our collaborative paper titled, “Analysis and Management of Thermal Loads Generated In Vivo by Miniaturized Optoelectronic Implantable Devices,” consisting of equal parts experiment and theory, with additional content in animal model evaluations, all enabled by an interdisciplinary team of students and postdoctoral fellows in my group and the groups of Professors Yonggang Huang (@NorthwesternU), Yevgenia (Genia) Kozorovitskiy (@NorthwesternU), @AvilaROAD (former jointly advised PhD student with Prof. Huang, now on the faculty at @RiceUniversity), Abraham Vázquez-Guardado (former postdoc, now on the faculty at North Carolina State University) and @YiyuanYang15146 (former PhD student, now on the faculty at National University of Singapore). At 22 pages of dense content, this paper is – in our view – a good example of academic rigor in the engineering science of bioelectronic systems. The results define essential, quantitative thermal considerations relevant to broad classes of active, miniaturized implantable devices -- with a focus on microscale light emitting diodes in filamentary probes for optogenetic studies that rely on behavioral studies of small, freely moving animals. An interesting side note is that this manuscript received detailed comments and strong, positive evaluations from six (!) different referees – an indication, perhaps, of some combination of interest in the content and dedication of the editors at Device! Of the >1000 papers that I’ve co-authored, only a small number (<5%) has received comments from six or more referees; in our experience, receiving even five referee reports is relatively rare (maybe ~10%). Thanks to everyone involved – the editors, the referees, the senior co-authors and, most importantly, the students and postdocs who did the bulk of the work: all of them, but most prominently Dr. @MingzhengWu (postdoc in my group), Kaiqing Zhang (postdoc in Prof. Huang’s group, now on the faculty at @CengJ17469) Priscilla Fok (visiting PhD student in my group from @NTUsg), @haohuizhang1994 (postdoc in Prof. Huang’s group) and Andrew Efimov (PhD student in my group)!

RT @christos_edward: Inspired by nature — and for nature 🌍: our @PNAS paper shows how seashell-inspired designs can make recycled more reli…

First copies of my book are here!! As a new faculty member, I realized that in addition to my research job, I also had a leadership job…and I wasn’t prepared for that. This book is the guide I wish I’d had then, with the goal of helping others now.   jenheemstra.com/book

🇺🇸 Enjoy your big day! Honestly...