In recent years, the Gulf Coast region has been tremendously affected by the landfall of large hurricanes. In 2005, Category 3 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the coastal regions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, and in 2008, Hurricane Ike (a Category 2 storm) came ashore over Galveston and wreaked havoc in the Houston area, knocking out power to many customers in the greater Houston metro area for several weeks.

The UH Cullen College of Engineering’s department of industrial engineering hosted their annual awards and honors banquet on Friday, May 2 to honor their outstanding alumni, donors, faculty, staff and students. The formal affair was held at Brady’s Landing restaurant.

If you lie down on the couch and put your hand over your heart, you’ll feel your chest rise and fall with each breath. It seems trivial, but the movement of lungs expanding and contracting can drastically change radiation treatment options for patients with lung cancer.

The Cullen College of Engineering faculty members have made their final decisions on this year’s overall Outstanding Junior and Senior Award recipients, and the winners are Connor Fernandez, chemical engineering junior, and Ryan Hannemann, mechanical engineering senior.

MEET TEAM PRIMER…A group of mechanical engineering undergrads at the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering who will be competing in the upcoming Shell Eco-marathon in Houston from April 25th to 27th. The 12-member team is currently building an ultra-energy efficient, battery-powered vehicle from the ground up. Team Primer will enter their vehicle, named “EcoPrimer,” under the marathon’s “prototype” class, focusing on maximizing the car’s efficiency rather than the driver’s comfort. The team members’ tireless work on “EcoPrimer” will double as their senior Capstone Design projects, the penultimate project for all graduating seniors at the Cullen College.

You may see quite a few college students at the next Science and Engineering Fair of Houston (SEFH) on February 19th and 20th, but they won’t be competing against the middle and high school students participating in the fair. Instead, they’ll be learning from them.

The Program for Master in Engineering Studies (PROMES) says on its website that they aim for students to “encourage each other to be leaders here at UH and in their careers beyond UH,” and PROMES alumna Nwamaka Nzeocha is a shining example. Nzeocha, who graduated from the Cullen College of Engineering in May 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, is now offering two engineering scholarships ($1000 and $500) for PROMES innovators in her “Dare to be Different” scholarship contest.

December 9-15, 2013 is National Computer Science Education Week, and the non-profit organization Code.org is using the week to promote their One Hour of Code initiative. According to Code.org, the flagship week-long celebration is meant to coincide with the 107th birthday of Admiral Grace Hopper, an early American computing pioneer.

Watch our video for the NSBE's "Walk for Education!"