Research Library

Republicans are ready to support Israel. But what about Ukraine? As the war between Israel and Hamas intensifies, fellow Joe Barnes examines the shifting focus of U.S. foreign policy and what it means for Kyiv.

How can Texas secure an affordable, sustainable, and reliable power supply for all its citizens? This report explores key insights from research conducted at Rice University.

Are our views of sustainability becoming distorted by the often unsubstantiated “green” actions of companies and organizations? This brief explores why we urgently need a new framework for sustainability — one that relies on a holistic, cross-disciplinary, and multidimensional life cycle approach.

A new migrant caravan with over 7,000 individuals has formed in Mexico and is headed to the United States. What will its arrival mean for border cities, and what challenges will it bring for U.S. security?

Fellows Ed Emmett and David Gantz explore climate change, international shipping, and what happens when a vital passage for global supply chains becomes unreliable.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a gap in our ability to track and stop the spread of infectious diseases. With funding from the National Science Foundation, a Rice University research team is engineering bacteria to sustainably and continuously monitor wastewater for viruses.

With Mexico's 2024 elections quickly approaching, will democracy prevail, or will the nation backslide into a one-party system?

The work of Katalin Karikó, 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine recipient, laid a foundation for the development of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines that saved close to 20 million lives worldwide. But her discoveries almost did not happen, writes Alicia L. Johnson, a civic science postdoctoral associate at the Baker Institute Center for Health and Biosciences. Karikó’s story highlights the vital importance of supporting women in STEM.

As China appears ever closer to attempting a coercive annexation of Taiwan, this report explores how such a move could trigger a chain of nuclear proliferation — potentially adding thousands more warheads to stockpiles globally.

Prioritizing the safety and capacity of reconstruction workers can speed up the disaster recovery process and make communities more resilient to future hazards, write Drs. William Brett Perkison and Bill Christian, researchers at UTHealth Houston.