Damage to natural gas pipelines is both dangerous and expensive to repair. Much of it is also entirely avoidable.

Excavators cause about 30 percent of pipeline damage incidents. In most of these events, the team working the excavator hadn’t bothered to find out if a natural gas pipeline is nearby before digging, even though there’s a national hotline set up to provide this information 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Yesterday marked the start of National Engineers Week, a time to recognize the essential roles engineers play in modern society. In cooperation with the Houston Engineers Week Committee, engineering professional organizations and societies in and around the Houston area use this time to recognize their outstanding young members with a Young Engineer of the Year Award. This year, four alums of the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering received the honor.

The Cullen College of Engineering faculty members have made their final decisions on this year’s overall Outstanding Junior and Senior Award recipients, and the winners are Connor Fernandez, chemical engineering junior, and Ryan Hannemann, mechanical engineering senior.

MEET TEAM PRIMER…A group of mechanical engineering undergrads at the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering who will be competing in the upcoming Shell Eco-marathon in Houston from April 25th to 27th. The 12-member team is currently building an ultra-energy efficient, battery-powered vehicle from the ground up. Team Primer will enter their vehicle, named “EcoPrimer,” under the marathon’s “prototype” class, focusing on maximizing the car’s efficiency rather than the driver’s comfort. The team members’ tireless work on “EcoPrimer” will double as their senior Capstone Design projects, the penultimate project for all graduating seniors at the Cullen College.

You may see quite a few college students at the next Science and Engineering Fair of Houston (SEFH) on February 19th and 20th, but they won’t be competing against the middle and high school students participating in the fair. Instead, they’ll be learning from them.

Civil Engineering students at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering are about to get a firsthand lesson in the grim reality of the country’s crumbling infrastructure, thanks to Dan McNichol’s “Dire States” lecture tour.

Researchers with the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering are creating what will likely be the most accurate and detailed map of a forested area the world has ever seen.

The Program for Master in Engineering Studies (PROMES) says on its website that they aim for students to “encourage each other to be leaders here at UH and in their careers beyond UH,” and PROMES alumna Nwamaka Nzeocha is a shining example. Nzeocha, who graduated from the Cullen College of Engineering in May 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, is now offering two engineering scholarships ($1000 and $500) for PROMES innovators in her “Dare to be Different” scholarship contest.

December 9-15, 2013 is National Computer Science Education Week, and the non-profit organization Code.org is using the week to promote their One Hour of Code initiative. According to Code.org, the flagship week-long celebration is meant to coincide with the 107th birthday of Admiral Grace Hopper, an early American computing pioneer.