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SAN RAMON, Calif., May 19, 2008 – The Itanium® Solutions Alliance today announced the winners of its second annual Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Award. The global award program recognizes innovation and achievement using Intel® Itanium® processor technology to solve complex humanitarian, business and entrepreneurial challenges. Each winner receives a $50,000 U.S. cash prize or can make a charitable donation to an organization of their choice. This year’s category winners are University of Houston bioinformatics research team for Humanitarian Impact; Protégésoft for Enterprise Business Application achievement; and S7 Software for Entrepreneurial Innovation.

Dr. Eric Bittner, associate professor of chemistry, received the Excellence in Research and Scholarship Award for the associate professor rank. Dr. Bittner was a recipient TLC² Innovation Funding for his research into quantum dynamics in molecular electronic devices. He is an active member of the international community of theoretical chemistry researchers and received a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship.

The University of Houston's energy research and education initiatives will be showcased at the 2008 Offshore Technology Conference at Reliant Stadium from May 5-8, 2008. The exhibit, a concerted effort by the UH College of Technology and UH Research Development, will promote the university's Strategic Energy Alliance, ongoing energy research projects and the CoT's petroleum technology initiative, which prepares leaders for tomorrow's petroleum technology work force.

TLC² congratulates its Co-Director David Francis on winning the Esther Farfel Award, the highest honor accorded to a University faculty member. The award, a symbol of overall career excellence, carries a cash prize of $10,000. Francis received the award at a public ceremony on April 29, 2008 with UH President and Chancellor Dr. Renu Khator in attendance.

The University of Houston, Rice University, The Methodist Hospital Research Institute and Technology For All (TFA) have received a $1.5 million federal grant for research in east Houston that will examine ways to provide novel, low-cost, personalized health monitoring to people with chronic diseases living in working-class communities.

The National Council for Black Studies honored the African American Studies (AAS) Program at the University of Houston with its Sankore Award. The award is given annually and recognizes the outstanding African American Studies program of the year and its contributions to the field of Africana Studies. "We are proud to receive this award that is a testament to our dedicated and hardworking staff and faculty," said James Conyers, professor of African American Studies and director of the program. "We look forward to advances in our program and to strengthening our faculty recruitment and development components."

A $750,000 grant from one of the world’s largest energy companies, BP America, will help the University of Houston recruit and offer scholarships to students in engineering, sciences, mathematics and business. TLC²-affiliated researchers and students at UH are likely to benefit from this donation as much of their research is highly interdisciplinary in nature.

The University of Houston’s Graduate College of Social Work is one of the best in the country, according to the most recent rankings by U.S. News & World Report. In its annual survey of the Best Graduate Schools, the magazine ranked the GCSW in its top 50 of all graduate social work programs in the country. "These rankings are a testament to the quality and commitment of our faculty and staff," said Ira Colby, professor and dean of the college. "I congratulate everyone for their hard work."

Experts in biological interaction networks will gather at TLC² for a colloquium entitled "Modeling and Analysis of Biological Networks" on May 15-16 and sponsored by M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Houston's Departments of Mathematics and Biology. Distinguished speakers from across the country will participate in the free colloquium.

SiCortex will make a presentation on "Applications Performance Characterizations on the SiCortex Architecture" on Wednesday, April 16, in TLC²'s Multimedia Seminar. The "lunch and learn" session will focus on running applications on the SiCortex architecture, an area of interest to researchers with high performance computing needs. The featured speaker will be Matt Reilly, the company's Chief Engineer and one of its founders. The event is free and open to the public.