The University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering was well represented in Houston-area events that recognized National Engineers Week.
Four college alumni or current students were honored as 2007 Young Engineers of the Year by various professional associations.
Courtney Bird, a graduate student with the college’s Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, was named the 2007 Young Engineer of the Year for the Houston-Galveston Post of the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME). She currently works in the Houston offices of consulting firm Carter & Burgess. Her present assignment is with the company’s land development group, which provides site-development services to commercial and government clients. She is also secretary of the Houston-Galveston SAME post, where she created a scholarship fund for high school and college students.
The National Society of Black Engineers--Houston Alumni Extension (NSBE-HAE), named Kenneth Flakes (2002 BSME) its 2007 Young Engineer of the year. Flakes is a product design engineer for the Surface Systems Engineering group at Cameron, a provider of flow equipment products, systems and services to the oil, gas and process industries. An active member in NSBE-HAE, he currently serves as the group’s programs chair. In this role, he organized a Christmas party for children at Tejas Children’s Home, spearheaded fundraising efforts to purchase SAT/ACT preparation materials for youth involved with the organization, led a voter-registration drive, and oversaw the organization’s participation in the Gulf Coast Texas Alliance of Minority Engineers’ career day.
Yaramy Treviño (1995 BSEE) was honored as the Society of Mexican-American Engineers and Scientists (MAES) 2007 Young Engineer of the Year. As an employee of Jacobs Sverdrup, Treviño supports the Inertial Systems Laboratory at Johnson Space Center, NASA. As scholarship chair for the USA/MAES program, he oversees a scholarship that awards$2,500 to ten minority students studying engineering or science. He is also a frequent speaker at MAES outreach presentations at local schools and at the Houston Hispanic Forum.
Xiuli Wang (2000 Ph.D. ChE) was named a 2007 Asian-American Engineer of the Year by the Chinese Institute of Engineers, USA, a co-sponsor of National Engineers Week. She currently works with BP, where she leads a company-wide project in injection well completions and sand control that has already re-made the company’s guidelines on injection well completions.
In addition, two students recognized by Cullen College were honored by the Texas Society of Engineering as the winners of the Most Outstanding Junior and Senior awards for the 2006-2007 academic year.
The Most Outstanding Junior award went to Alfonso Carmona. Carmona is a chemical engineering major, and is pursing minors in chemistry and petroleum engineering. He boasts a grade point average of approximately 3.89. The Most Outstanding Senior honor went to Phuc Huynh. Huynh, who has a GPA of just under 3.9, is majoring in electrical engineering. A winner of the Goldwater Scholarship, after graduation he plans on pursing his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at UH.