President's Office Welcome Annual Report Alumni Letters Speeches, Etc. As he and Edgar Odell Lovett understood, those occupations would be increasingly industrial, rather than agrarian. As the twentieth century draws to a close, occupations are again being redefined. The Industrial Age, based on a physical infrastructure of factories and transport facilities, has given way to the Information Age, increasingly based on networks.
Rice is a crossroads of advancement in human capital and technology.
First, information technology . Parallel computing works smarter, breaking tasks into hundreds or thousands of segments, each assigned to a microprocessor that operates in parallel with hundreds or thousands of others. As a result, huge computations can be handled hundreds of times faster than with conventional supercomputers. Parallel computing also contributes to the education of engineers. Rice computational engineering students are using it to optimize engineering processes, like oil and gas exploration, aerospace design, and bridge building.