Each spring the University of Houston shines a spotlight on the faculty’s best and brightest, honoring them with teaching and research awards. Read more about the Cullen College of Engineering professors who earned the distinction below!

Research underway in a UH Cullen College of Engineering laboratory to make “heavy water” less expensively could soon make nuclear energy safer, eliminating real-life disasters like those that have occurred at the Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear power plants.

Lars Grabow, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the Cullen College, was recently elected as second vice chair for the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering (CRE) division of the Amer

Last year, a professor and student in the chemical and biomolecular engineering department at the UH Cullen College of Engineering published an article in Science outlining a surprising discovery about gold’s unexpected catalytic properties.

At this month’s Cullen College of Engineering faculty and staff meeting, Dean Joseph Tedesco announced the recipients of the 2014–2015 faculty excellence awards, which recognize faculty members for their outstanding performance in teaching, research and service.

Two professors in the Cullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston earned Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF) this year. Each received a five-year, $500,000 grant for integration of outstanding research and educational outreach.

Perhaps one of the most desirable qualities of gold – especially to those wearing it as jewelry – is its ability to hold onto its bright, shining glow. Gold can resist rusting and tarnishing when exposed to air or water because it’s inert, meaning it’s one of the least reactive of all metals.

Researchers across the world are looking into various sources of sustainable feedstock for energy and chemicals production with the hope that these cleaner sources will dramatically reduce our need for petroleum-based feedstock and lower our carbon footprint in the future.  One such renewable energy source is biomass derived from naturally-occurring raw materials such as wood and agricultural waste, which can be converted to biofuels and biochemicals.

Lars Grabow has been given a $750,000 grant to solve a multi-billion dollar problem.

Methane, the majority component of natural gas, is cheap and plentiful, thanks in large part to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Ideally, it could be converted into rarer and far more valuable chemicals like methanol, ethane or ethylene, all of which have dozens of uses, many involving the creation of plastics and polymers.