A team of graduate students from the University of Houston will take the Texas Energy Innovation Challenge, offering a solution to a problem gaining attention in shale plays across the country.

Over the course of his career as an engineer, Larry Snider (BSIE ’55) lived and worked all around the world. Larry and his wife, Gerri, have called many places “home,” from California and Iran, to Ohio and Pakistan. Yet no matter where his career took him, Larry said there was one place he always returned to: the University of Houston.

The largest industrial and systems engineering event of the year is the Institute of Industrial Engineer’s (IIE) annual conference and expo, and this year’s gathering will host Cullen College alumna Nancy Currie as keynote speaker.

Students at the University of Houston are eligible to participate in the Moscow Summer Intern Program as part of a student initiative of the Baker Institute Space Policy Program. The program is a wonderful opportunity for all UH students, but especially those with engineering expertise and an excitement for space exploration!

Brown & Gay Engineers, Inc. (www.browngay.com), an engineering consulting firm based in Houston, established an endowed scholarship in the UH Cullen College of Engineering’s civil and environmental engineering department. The gift totals $52,000 -- $50,000 to establish the endowment and $2,000 for use toward current scholarships for fall 2015.

The UH Cullen College of Engineering is pleased to announce the first-ever issue of Optimum Magazine, a publication devoted to news and updates from the industrial engineering department. This issue of Optimum Magazine highlights professors and students in the department who are optimizing radiation treatments for cancer, how co-ops are providing real-world lessons for IE students, and many more updates from the department.

The Mehta family has provided support to establish the Mehta Family Engineering Research Center on the ground floor of the University of Houston’s new Multidisciplinary Research and Engineering Building.

Watson, a computer program named for IBM’s founder, defeated the two best human players on “Jeopardy!” one of the most challenging game shows of all time, in 2011, marking a significant milestone in the advancement of big data analytics.

Two professors with the UH Cullen College of Engineering were awarded nearly $250,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to improve the resilience and reliability of the U.S. electricity grid in response to hurricanes and other major weather events.