A strong family connection to the Cullen College of Engineering, along with a competitive scholarship package and the opportunities provided by the metro area, all combined to create the environment that has allowed David Malcotti to flourish at the University of Houston.
The mechanical engineering student was one of 902 proud graduates crossing the stage at the Fall 2025 Cullen College of Engineering Commencement on Dec. 18 at the Fertitta Center. The full ceremony can be watched on YouTube.
But when it came to picking a college, Malcotti said three factors went into his decision.
“I heard many good things about the engineering college,” he said. “Multiple family friends, who were just like me, immigrants from Latin America, went through UH engineering and got very good engineering jobs. I saw these family friends when I was younger and saw how they were proud of the education they received and the Jobs they were able to get.”
There was an even more direct connection for him than his friends to UH engineering, though. His sister Laura Malcotti-Sanchez — now Laura Lester — was the college’s Outstanding Junior in 2019 and Outstanding Senior in 2020, earning a B.S. and a master’s in mechanical engineering in her time at UH.
“As she went through the program, I saw her grow and saw the amazing internships she got, and eventually how she got a full-time job in HPE designing super computers and high-performance AI servers,” Malcotti said. “Seeing this and how my family friends succeeded because of their UH engineering education made me want to attend UH for engineering. Because of this I knew that I would end up as a well-rounded engineer ready to make an impact on industry.”
Malcotti said that along with his parents, his sister stressed the importance of career fairs and internship opportunities. He started attending the fairs even as a freshman.
“These career fairs challenged me and taught me how to properly talk to recruiters and get all the silly mistakes out the way,” he said. “This preparation allowed me to be ready and land my first internship with DOW during that year’s fall career fair. My mom and dad always listened to my failures, encouraged me to keep going, to keep growing regardless of whether I was motivated or not. This helped me to be consistent in my studies and career development, which paid me dividends during my junior and senior year.”
Beyond the family connection, Malcotti also cited receiving a Tier One scholarship and the job opportunities of the Houston metro area as reasons for choosing UH.
“Within a 45-minute drive, there are offices and headquarters of some of the largest companies in the world and many other small to medium sized companies. This gave me confidence that I could find an internship in Houston due to UH’s connections throughout the area,” he said.”
Malcotti mentioned two professors as being instrumental in his development — Fritz Claydon, Professor and Associate Department Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Alex Landon, professor of practice and the director of the Cullen Honors Program.
“I had Fritz for introduction to engineering and computing to engineers. Fritz saw potential in me and gave me the opportunity to become an engineering ambassador, allowing me to build my public speaking skills by talking to large crowds of prospective students and their parents. I can say with certainty this built my confidence, allowing me to put myself into situations I would not have done before.”
“I met Alex Landon through engineering ambassadors. Alex always told me and other UH students that we compete with students from some of the best universities and win, encouraging us to not tell ourselves ‘no’ and to go for it. This really changed my perspective, allowed me to take ownership of my strengths, and allow others to say no to me and not no to myself.”
Malcotti also mentioned his classmate Ken Kirkpatrick, a 2024 graduate, as someone that helped get him through his coursework.
“We took all our math classes together and had so much fun studying together,” Malcotti said. “Ken helped me understand many difficult math topics like in partial differential equations and allowed me to escape some of the stress by going to car shows and talking about cars.”
Malcotti starts an accelerated master’s program at UH in Spring 2026. Malcotti completed an internship with Microsoft in the summer of 2025, and he will return to the company as an intern for Summer 2026. While he was there, he learned the importance of a positive corporate culture and multidisciplinary team work.
“During my time at Microsoft I worked in the Xbox division, specifically in the group that designs all Xbox hardware, called Gaming Devices Ecosystem (GDE),” he said. “Because I was a part of GDE, I had access to all the gaming hardware you could ask for. At one point I had three Xbox Series X and one Xbox Series S sitting on my desk as decoration. Sometimes, on Fridays towards the end of the day I would turn on one of the Xbox’s and play DOOM or FIFA with my co-workers.”
“When I wasn’t messing around with gaming hardware for fun, I was working on two projects for a future product. Both projects consisted of solving problems that had not been solved yet in industry and internally, with one of the problems being more than 10 years old. Since these were complex, open-ended problems, I had to work with five multi-disciplinary teams, to understand product constraints, cost constraints, manufacturing constraints, brainstorm potential solutions and get feedback on prototypes. After a while, many design iterations, testing and meetings I was able to finish both projects. I am excited about seeing if my work ends up being used on future Xbox products.”
Malcotti said he’s “super excited” to go back to Microsoft, to continue learning from senior engineers and making his own mark. He encouraged students at UH to apply for their own internships, and to use the skills learned at one in future experiences.
“I got this opportunity by applying online for a mechanical engineering internship on the Microsoft career portal, then passed a 3-hour technical interview, where I was asked about dynamics, solid mechanics, material science, design of machine elements and design questions. The main reason why I got this internship was because of my previous internships at DOW and HPE. I got DOW at the fall 2022 career fair and I got HPE through a referral. An important reason for getting this opportunity was knowing all the core mechanical engineering classes very well, allowing me to do very well on the technical interview.”