Shasta’s Story Round-Up: June 2016

School may be out for summer (at least it was, until summer session started), but we’re still celebrating out-of-this-world Cougars! Speaking of which, see how many space-related stories you can spot in this story round-up:

Flooding has become a fact of life in and around Houston — in response, recent mechanical engineering technology graduates David Foster, Mohammad Abbas, Usama Javed, Smiraj Pillai, and Binh Tran designed a prototype for a high water rescue vehicle. The idea that came to them last year after the occurrence of the flash flooding in Houston during the Memorial Day holiday;

The University of Houston put Maria Rios (’97) on a path to becoming one of Fortune Magazine’s “Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs” in 2013. She shared her passion for her business (she is CEO of Nation Waste, so her business is, as she puts it, trash) and why she is proud to be a Coog;

Attorney, former Houston City Council member, and UH track and field star Jolanda Jones (’89, J.D. ’95) will appear on a new reality show highlighting African American women lawyers in the Houston area, “Sisters in Law”;

Meet our new student regent! UH senior Joshua Freed recently was appointed to the board by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott;

Alumni hit the links at two golf tournaments this month: the Ted Bauer Golf Classic and the UH College of Pharmacy Golf Classic;

Feeling hungry in Houston? Try one of these alumni-owned restaurants;

Three UH Engineering undergraduate women are improving NASA’s CubeSat missions by programming small satellites to orient and stabilize themselves based on the position of the sun;

Dr. Bernard Harris Jr. (’78), who was the first African-American man to walk in space, visited campus to help area middle school students build model spacecraft during the 17th annual ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp;

Two members of the University of Houston Law Center’s 2016 graduating class will soon be putting their passion for public interest law to good use with fellowships from Equal Justice Works;

Health and Human Performance doctoral candidate Hawley Kunz was recommended for a NASA internship by her faculty advisor, Dr. Richard Simpson. That position has led to her being hired as a scientist in the NASA immunology lab with Wyle, a NASA contractor;

Students in the University of Houston’s Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) are working on projects with the potential to reshape how we think about space exploration;

On campus through July 2: The Texas Music Festival (TMF) at the University of Houston is a haven for student musicians, but the festival faculty, which includes artists from UH’s Moores School of Music and other institutions, also get into the act;

As part of academic nursing’s ongoing efforts to address prescription drug and opioid misuse across the U.S., the University of Houston School of Nursing will be incorporating new prevention measures into its curriculum;

Ricardo Sosa (’16) received the 2016 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, a competitive award open to undergraduate seniors and early graduate students pursuing a master’s or doctoral degree in the social sciences, STEM or STEM education fields. He will being graduate studies at UH this fall;

Bauer College undergraduate student Amanda Moya is one of the state’s best, according to the Texas Business Hall of Fame. She recently earned a $15,000 scholarship from the organization, which selects one outstanding student per university each year from 26 participating institution;

Joel Deleon, who just graduated with his B.S. in Teaching & Learning (grade 4-8 mathematics), has been honored with UH’s Student Employee of the Year award. Deleon has served for the last three years as a peer mentor for the Greater Texas Foundation (GTF) Scholars program.

Have a student or alumni story you’d like to see linked on the round-up, or know a Cougar we should profile in one of our weekly interviews? Contact us at lunarcougar@uh.edu. To read more great alumni and donor profiles, or to make a gift to UH, visit the University Advancement home page.