NSM Pride: Awards and Honors
Share News of Your Achievements
NSM is proud of the achievements of our outstanding alumni, students, staff and faculty. Submit news of your awards, new jobs and honors to breakthrough@nsm.uh.edu or contact Kathy Major at ksmajor@uh.edu or 713-743-4023.
Alumni
Mariam Manuel (’10, Biology, teachHOUSTON) was nominated by the National Math & Science Initiative for the White House Champion of Change Award in the Young Women Empowering Communities category. She is the Instructional Specialist for the Robert Shaw Center for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics for the Katy Independent School District and a UH adjunct professor.
Students
Luis Carlos Carvajal and Yiduo (Andy) Liu (Ph.D. students, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) tied for third place in the student poster competition of the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies and the Gulf Coast Section of the SEPM 65th Annual Convention. The 66 posters in the competition were selected from over 100 entries.
Delia Gomez (Biology major), one of UH’s Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Scholarship recipients, spoke before 980 rodeo Gatekeepers Committee volunteers. Gomez, who plans to go to veterinary school after graduation, told the committee how the scholarship impacted her studies and career plans.
Lauren Le (Biology major) received the UH Staff Council’s B. Renae Milton Students of Staff Scholarship.
Steven Leslie (Ph.D. student, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) won second place at the student poster competition at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Annual Convention and Exhibition. The 20 posters in the competition were selected by a panel of judges from more than 100 entries.
Unal Okyay (Ph.D. student, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) won second place in the poster competition at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists/Society of Exploration Geophysicists Student EXPO. There were 200 posters in the competition.
Kurt Sundell (Ph.D. student, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) received the Houston Geological Society Outstanding Student Award. Each year, the organization recognizes outstanding graduate students from Texas universities based on recommendations from faculty members for their outstanding academic achievements and contributions to geology.
Faculty
Eric Bittner (John and Rebecca Moores Professor, Chemistry and Physics) was a featured scientist at “Dark Matter,” a Houston-area Art Show of Science and Civil Rights.
Albert M.K. Cheng (Professor, Computer Science) delivered the keynote address at the 3rd Annual Texas STEM Conference, Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM. His two-part presentation was titled “How to Do Research? and Functional Reactive Real-Time Systems.”
Paul Chu (Professor, Physics, TLL Temple Chair of Science, Founding Director and Chief Scientist, Texas Center for Superconductivity at University of Houston) presented “A Possible New Paradigm for Higher Tc” at the Third Department of Energy/Basic Energy Sciences – Chinese Academy of Sciences Workshop on Novel Superconductors and Related Quantum Materials held at Stony Brook University. Chu also served as the keynote speaker at the Taiwan-Texas Higher Education Forum delivering the presentation, “Higher Education in Transition: One Physicist’s View.”
Stanley Deming (Professor Emeritus, Chemistry) is authoring a column “Statistics in the Laboratory” that will be featured four times a year in American Laboratory. The first column appears in the October 2015 issue.
Margarete Jadamec (Assistant Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) and Joel Saylor (Assistant Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) were recognized as outstanding reviewers. Jadamec was recognized by Earth & Planetary Science Letters, and Saylor was recognized by two geosciences journals: Earth & Planetary Science Letters and Journal of South American Earth Sciences. Elsevier, the publisher of both journals, recognizes outstanding reviewers as those reviewers in the top 10th percentile for the quantity and quality of reviews over a two-year period.
The Journal of Numerical Mathematics, which is hosted by UH’s Department of Mathematics, was ranked 10th out of 310 in the category of Mathematics and 10th out of 255 in Applied Mathematics in the 2014 Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Report. The Journal of Numerical Mathematics is run by the following mathematics faculty members: Editors-in-Chief: Yuri Kuznetsov and Ronald Hoppe, Managing Editor: Maxim Olshanskii, and Editorial Board Member: Roland Glowinski.
Don Van Nieuwenhuise (Research Associate Professor and Director, Professional Geoscience Programs) served as a panelist for the “Shale Gas and the Potential for U.S. Energy Independence: A Rational Middle Energy Series Panel Discussion” at the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston.
