Forbes.com recently featured a blog post written by University of Houston Energy Ambassador Alex Pankiewicz. Pankiewicz, who is double majoring in chemical engineering and chemistry with a minor in energy and sustainability, is the second UH Energy Ambassor to be featured on Forbes.com this fall.

A researcher at the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering has earned a $1.8 million grant from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to determine how the use of dispersants to break up an oil spill affects the natural cleaning role played by bacteria.

A whopping 13 percent of Texas teens who took the 2015 SAT test indicated that they intended to study engineering in college. Engineering was listed as the second-most popular career choice for Texas teens -- 22 percent of students who reported their future plans indicated they were interested in healthcare professions. 

Each year, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) presents travel awards to outstanding students from across the nation to present their research at the annual AIChE meeting. Sashank Kasiraju, a chemical and biomolecular engineering graduate student at the UH Cullen College of Engineering, is one of just 20 students to receive this honor from AIChE’s Catalysis and Reaction Engineering (CRE) Division this year.

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.

Since its inception in 1989, an invitation to the Kavli Frontiers in Science Symposia has symbolized a young scientist’s vast accomplishments in his or her field. Each year, 80 to 100 of the world’s most outstanding scientists under the age of 45 are invited to the symposia, which are sponsored by the Kavli Foundation and the U.S.

Patrick Cirino, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UH Cullen College of Engineering, earned a three-year, $300,000 National Science Foundation grant to continue developing and implementing genetic tools that advance synthetic biology and metabolic engineering.

The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, SITC, selected Gabrielle Romain, post-doctoral research fellow in the UH Cullen College of Engineering, to present her research on cancer immunotherapy at its 30th anniversary annual meeting. With an approximate $750 travel grant, she plans to attend the conference in National Harbor, Maryland, in November.

This summer, Cullen College of Engineering doctoral students Manjesh Kumar, Matt Oleksiak and Katy Olafson were invited to give oral presentations at two of the prestigious Gordon Research Conferences (GRC).

The conferences, founded in the late 1920s by Dr. Neil E. Gordon, aim to promote discussions and the exchange of ideas by focusing on new, innovative research in the fields of biological, chemical and physical sciences.