News & Events

10/29/09: Lack of access to basic health care in the developing world is a global crisis. For example, it's estimated that 24 million children still don't have access to immunizations, that a simple diagnostic for tuberculosis could save 400,000 lives per year and that prevention of waterborne diseases could free up half of the world’s hospital beds.

10/29/09: Lack of access to basic health care in the developing world is a global crisis. For example, it's estimated that 24 million children still don't have access to immunizations, that a simple diagnostic for tuberculosis could save 400,000 lives per year and that prevention of waterborne diseases could free up half of the world’s hospital beds.

10/21/09: Malaria kills millions of people each year and infects hundreds of millions more, and the most common way to diagnose it is to take a close look at a patient's blood. That won't change with a new device proposed by Rice's Rebecca Richards-Kortum and Tomasz Tkaczyk. What will change is that the blood can stay inside the body.

10/21/09: Doctors and nurses use needles to take your blood, but how often do they use them to take your picture? A low-cost camera-in-a-needle invented by Rice University professors Rebecca Richards-Kortum and Tomasz Tkaczyk and their students is in human trials and being used to look for signs of esophageal and cervical cancer. More trials are on the horizon to detect oral and colon cancer, all with a device that costs a fraction of others.

8/21/09: Technology is often blamed for the rise in U.S. medical spending from 5 percent of the U.S. economy in 1960 to 16.5 percent today. But what if the steady stream of surgical tools, designer drugs and diagnostic gadgets coming out of university laboratories could make health care cheaper -- and save lives in underdeveloped countries at the same time?

8/20/2009: I was a member of the first class of seven BTB interns that traveled to sub-Saharan Africa. On my way to Lesotho the first time, I had no idea what lay ahead. For years, I had dreamed romantic visions of helping to rescue the world from illness and poverty. But with Africa looming, I was anxious about coming face to face with extreme poverty. I was afraid I would not be able to handle the harsh realities in a country that had experienced so much death and suffering. I hoped and prayed this would not be the case, and that my passion for this line of work would grow stronger from the experience.

6/1/2009: Rice University students are spreading warmth around the world as they bring their plans for the Hot Cot – a low-cost warming crib for neonatal care – to developing nations this summer.  A team of recent Rice graduates spent the school year refining the Hot Cot to make it cheap and easy to build in as many places in the world as possible while maximizing benefits to infants.

4/30/2009: Bili lights help cure children of jaundice, but the process isn't quick. It takes a solid 24 to 48 hours under the lights to treat an infant properly. When Cui took charge of a Rice 360˚ and BTB initiative to refine bili lights for distribution to developing countries, she understood the value of making them both available and affordable.

Twenty MBA students from the Jones School at Rice University traveled to Kigali, Rwanda to work with African entrepreneurs to commercialize medical technologies developed by Rice bioengineers.

2/11/09: College students, while recognized for their zeal to make a difference in the world, are not usually thought of as capitalist benefactors. They’re much more likely to be on the receiving end of loans and financial aid.

1/22/09: Dale Dawson, the founder and CEO of Dallas-based relief agency Bridge2Rwanda, delivered a talk at Rice University titled “Creating Tomorrow's Leaders to Transform a Nation”.

10/3/08: The former president’s organization, the Clinton Global Initiative-University project (CGI-U), has sent a grant of $5,000 to support the Diagnostic Lab-in-a-Backpack development, which gets medical equipment to remote parts of the world where it’s sorely needed.

9/26/08: Speaking with passion and frustration in equal measures, former Ambassador Stephen Lewis delivered a report card to the nations of the world on their progress toward goals set for the new millennium.

7/17/08: A group of Rice students and scholars is in the southern African nation of Lesotho this summer developing cost-effective integrated approaches to sustainable development and energy.

3/14/08: At the invitation of former President Bill Clinton, President David Leebron will serve as a panelist at the inaugural meeting of Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) this weekend in New Orleans. It's the first of two invitations for Leebron to participate this spring in programs geared toward global outreach.