Inspired by nature, Ph.D. candidate proposes computational framework to solve life problems

Real life problems are often complex and hard to resolve. So Mohammad Sarraf Joshaghani, a third year Ph.D. student at the Cullen College of Engineering, looks to nature, numerical techniques and computers to find possible solutions.

It’s a common human experience: Sitting on a beach, watching as the waves lap against the sand. You feel your worries start to melt away as your mind focuses on the breaking waves, one after another. You notice the differences between them – how some build up height as they near the shore until they curl forward into a dramatic pipeline that’s the stuff of surfers’ dreams.

Environmental engineering Ph.D. candidate Aparna Balasubramani has found that carbon nanotubes may be the one of the best ways to stop poisonous polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, from entering waterways.

Chong Dai, Ph.D. candidate in environmental engineering at the Cullen College of Engineering, has won the American Chemical Society (ACS) Environmental Chemistry Graduate Student Award. The prestigious honor is bestowed on 25 students, at most, annually.

The award recognizes graduate students working in areas related to environmental chemistry. That’s Dai’s passion. No doubt the award committee saw it.

When Jameel Jordan became a petroleum engineering student at the Cullen College he never dreamed he'd also become a mentor to third graders.

“It never crossed my mind,” said Jordan.

But the opportunity found him when he learned of iEducate, a group that pays you to share your knowledge of STEM courses (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) with students in Houston’s underserved communities.

It seemed a good fit. Turns out it was perfect.

Undergraduate mechanical engineering students Tam Nguyen, a senior, and Serrae Reed, a junior, focus on their studies with the precision of the engineers they are becoming. Upon graduation, Nguyen has an engineering job nailed down at Shell, and Reed is conducting research on solar cells and the efficiency in which light is harvested for energy production.

Every year, as a marketing activity, the leadership board of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers at UH, recently named outstanding large chapter of the year by the national organization, brainstorms to create the next slogan that typifies their mission.

At the University of Houston, graduate students aren’t the only ones diving into research this summer.

Two doctoral students in the UH Cullen College of Engineering received the college’s Best Dissertation Awards for fall 2015.