Each year, the Engineering Alumni Association hosts the Distinguished Engineering Awards banquet to recognize alumni, faculty and friends of the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering who have made significant professional and academic contributions. The banquet will be held at the Four Season's Hotel in Downtown Houston on June 2.
Michael Ervin (1966 BSChE, 1969 MSChE, 1970 PhD ChE) and Michael J. Piwetz (1973 BSChE) will be recognized as this year's Distinguished Engineering Alumni. Shortly after receiving his PhD from UH in 1970, Michael Ervin began a long career at DuPont, serving many administrative roles at different company operations. After retiring from DuPont as a vice president of R&D for Imaging Systems and Medical Products in the early 90s, he successfully helped launch a start-up company in Austin before deciding to take the bar exam of the U.S. Patent Office. He now is working on intellectual property issues for small firms and serves as a consultant to DuPont. He also served for five years as the chairman for the UH Industrial Advisory Board for the Chemical Engineering Department.
Michael Piwetz is currently serving as the vice president of process engineering for Fluor, the world's largest publicly held engineering and construction company. He is responsible for all process design and technology for Fluor's Energy and Chemicals Strategic Business Unit in Houston, serving oil and gas production, LNG, refinery, petrochemical, chemical and power facilities. He is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and serves on the Dean's Advisory Council for both the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering and College of Technology.
Bryan Kennedy (1996 BSCE) has been selected as the 2006 Distinguished Young Engineering Alumnus. Following graduation ten years ago, he began his career at Jones & Carter, Inc., a civil engineering consulting firm. Kennedy quickly was made a partner in the firm and named a vice president. He currently serves as a manager of Land Development, as well as a manager of GIS projects for utility districts needing to address infrastructure management. He is also the district engineer for nine municipal utility districts and manages the development of numerous subdivisions in the Harris, Montgomery, Fort Ben and Brazoria county areas.
Larry Witte will receive the Roger Eichhorn Leadership Service Award. He currently serves at the Cullen College of Engineering as associate dean for graduate programs and professor of mechanical engineering. Throughout his career, he has received many grants to fund his thermal science research involving forced and natural convection, boiling heat transfer and sliding bubble heat transfer. Witte has published countless journal publications, non-referred articles and reports, and has been published within several books. He has received the Cullen College of Engineering Fluor-Daniel Award, the UH Engineering Alumni Organization Faculty Excellence Award and Distinguished Faculty Award, and has been named ASME South Texas Section Dean W.R. Woolrich Engineer of the Year.
Ernest Henley will receive the Abraham E. Dukler Distinguished Engineering Faculty Award. Henley is a professor emeritus of chemical engineering at the University of Houston. He joined the Cullen College of Engineering faculty in 1962 and was part of the department's rise to becoming one of the Top 10 chemical engineering programs in the nation. Henley has authored or co-authored some 120 articles and 15 books, most recently "Separation Process Principles", a second edition textbook for fundamental chemical engineering courses that is now being used in more than 100 departments across the country. As an active consultant, he holds nine patents and has served on the Board of Directors of Maxxim Medical, Inc., Procedyne, Inc., Lasermedics, Inc. and Nanodyne, Inc. He is the president of the Henley Foundation.
Click here to view previous award recipients from each category.