William Marsh Rice University (commonly known as Rice University) opened in 1912 as The William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science and Art is a private coeducational research university located in Houston, Texas, United States. Its campus is located near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. The student body consists of about 3,500 undergraduate, 900 post-graduate, and 1,200 doctoral students. The university employs about 610 full-time faculty members and 400 part-time or adjunct faculty members. Rice has a very high level of research activity and had $77.2 million in sponsored research funding in 2007. Rice is noted for its applied science programs in the fields of nanotechnology, artificial heart research, structural chemical analysis, and space science. Rice was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1985. The university is organized into eight schools offering 40 undergraduate degree programs,51 masters programs, and 29 doctoral programs. Rice began operation in 1912 as a coeducational institution with free tuition. The university was founded several years after the murder of its namesake, the prominent Houston businessman William Marsh Rice, who left a $4.6 million ($111 million in current dollars) funding endowment in his will. It is listed as one of thirty Hidden Ivies and as one of Newsweek's "New Ivies". Rice University is currently ranked 17th among "national universities" in the United States according to the 2010 US News and World Report. (wikipedia)

The Division of Physical Sciences under the leadership of Acting Dean Joseph Rudnick, is one of the four academic divisions of the UCLA College of Letters and Sciences. With 200 faculty members in six departments and several research institutes, the Division houses the disciplines of astronomy, atmospheric and oceanic sciences, chemistry and biochemistry, geology, geophysics, physics, planetary and space physics, mathematics and applied mathematics, and statistics, plus many related subspecialties. Its departments offer undergraduate, masters and doctoral degree programs, with a commitment to both undergraduate education and a strong graduate program anchored firmly in the research enterprise.