UH Chemical Engineering Faculty Wins Department of Energy Early Career Award

Lars Grabow, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UH Cullen College of Engineering, will be funded by a five-year, $750,000 Early Career Award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Grabow is currently investigating the use of catalysts — substances which speed up chemical reactions — to effectively remove oxygen from bio-oils in a process called hydrodeoxygenation. Read more.

News

New ECE Professor Wins $2M Recruitment Award From CPRIT
Cancer imaging expert David Mayerich will join the UH Cullen College of Engineering's department of electrical and computer engineering this fall. UH received a $2 million grant from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to help recruit Mayerich, who earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Texas A&M University. The award was one of several recruitment grants awarded by CPRIT, as part of the agency’s mandate to spur the recruitment of cancer researchers to Texas institutions. Read more.

Ph.D. Student Earns Honorable Mention from NSF
It’s no small feat that the Cullen College’s own Christopher Ortega (BSME ’12), a Ph.D. student studying mechanical engineering, was awarded an Honorable Mention for his National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program application. The fellowship is open to graduate students in any of the STEM fields. As part of the application process, students must illustrate academic interest in terms of grades as well as research in addition to community outreach efforts and technical skills. The fellowship has always been extremely competitive, and recent federal government funding cuts to NSF have further narrowed the margin of selected applicants. Read more.

Two ECE Professors Win IEEE-APS Awards
Two faculty members from the UH Cullen College of Engineering have won prestigious awards from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Antennas and Propagation Society (APS). This marks the first time that one institution won two of these prestigious IEEE-APS awards in the same year. Stuart Long, professor of electrical and computer engineering as well as associate dean of Undergraduate Research and the university’s Honors College, was awarded the John Kraus Antenna Award. Don Wilton, professor of electrical and computer engineering, was awarded the inaugural Harrington-Mittra Award in Computational Electromagnetics. Read more.

Electrical & Computer Engineering Department Named Top 50 Great Affordable Program
The electrical and computer engineering (ECE) department at the UH Cullen College of Engineering has been growing in size, raising its standards, and climbing national rankings for its world-class academic programs. Now, the Cullen College’s ECE department can add another bragging point to its long list of achievements and successes: the department has been named one of the top 50 “great affordable colleges for computer science and engineering” by Great Value Colleges, a premier website for offering data, program rankings and research on America’s best colleges and universities. Read more.

Mechanical Engineering Professor Wins New Investigator Award from NASA Texas Space Center Grant Consortium
Haleh Ardebili, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the UH Cullen College of Engineering, has won a one-year, $10,000 New Investigator Award from the NASA Texas Space Center Grant Consortium to develop flexible, stretchable batteries for spacesuits. Read more.

Chemical Engineering Professor Publishes Definitive Evidence on Zeolite Growth in Science Magazine
Jeff Rimer, the Ernest J. and Barbara M. Henley Assistant Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering with the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering, has published an article in Science Magazine that outlines an in situ method for visualizing the growth of zeolites through the use of instrumentation that permits measurements to be performed at realistic synthesis conditions. Rimer’s article marks the first time researchers have ever found definitive evidence of how silicalite-1 (MFI type) zeolites grow, showing that growth is a concerted process involving both the attachment of nanoparticles and the addition of molecules. Read more.