National Geographic explores the brilliance and creativity of Pablo Picasso in an April article titled “How Picasso’s Journey From Prodigy to Icon Revealed a Genius.” A trailblazing, legendary artist, Picasso revolutionized the art world during his lifetime and continues to awe and inspire to this day.

Plus: Other Faculty Award Announcements

Zhu Han, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Cullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston, is having a good year.

About 3.5 million people in America are living with some degree of paralysis related to stroke, multiple sclerosis or cerebral palsy. Nature magazine this month published an article about scientists developing technological solutions, such as neural prostheses or devices that read brain signals and help restore movement in paralyzed patients.

A paper about safer batteries made with organic materials written by a team of researchers at the UH Cullen College of Engineering made the cover of one of the world’s most prestigious chemistry journals — Angewandte Chemie International Edition, published by German publisher Wiley-VCH.

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas has awarded UH $2 million to recruit cancer researcher Rohith Reddy, who focuses on next-generation technologies for detecting gynecological cancers. Reddy, currently a post-doctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School, will become an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UH.

Xiaonan Shan, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, received the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU).

Whether you’ve suffered through a major Houston hurricane, flood event or momentary glitch in the power grid, no doubt you understand the severity of a power blackout. And lest you think Houston has cornered the market on such catastrophes, think back to 2003 when the biggest blackout in U.S. history left 50 million people in darkness in the northeast corner of America stretching into Canada.

The similarities between engineering pioneers Elon Musk and Nikola Tesla, who Musk named his electric car after, are being debated on the national stage.

U.S. News & World Report offers that Tesla went broke pushing his obsession with wireless communication and power transmission on a world that wasn’t yet ready in 1900, and poses the question whether the same could happen to Musk as he relentlessly pursues technology.

If there’s one thing Yan Yao gets a charge out of, it’s the idea of creating a better battery. The Cullen College assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering is known for being the most current in the battery industry. A Google search yields more than 16,000 citations of papers by Yao.