It was a great experience to serve as a judge and interact with talent middle/junior and high/senior school students at the 65th Science & Engineering Fair of Houston (SEFH) in February 2024. SEFH brings middle and high school students from all over southeast Texas together to compete annually in different STEM fields.

Cunzhi Zhao attended his PhD graduation commencement today on December 16, 2023. It was a once-in-a-lifetime ceremony especially the awarded degree is the highest doctoral degree in engineering. Congratulations again! Cunzhi completed his PhD Defense on November 7, 2023 and graduated in the same semester.

Here are some photos we took today.

This year is our 2nd time to have a Group Thanksgiving Party at our home. It's good for the team to take a break from busy research work and have some fun together. In addition to almost all the current members, two alumni also joined us!

We had good dinner and then played UNO and Texas hold'em Poker. I wanted to thank my wife here for preparing all the food! We had the kabob, lamb, beef, pork, chicken, duck, baked sweet potato, corn, garlic naan, cheese cake, snacks, fruits, soft drinks, and beer...

A few group photos were taken as attached below.

Arun attended his PhD graduation commencement today on May 13, 2023. It was a once-in-a-lifetime ceremony especially the awarded degree is the highest doctoral degree in engineering. Congratulations again! Arun completed his PhD Defense on December 1, 2022 and graduated in the same semester.

Here are some photos we took today.

On January 27, 2023, we had a long day event from 1pm-10pm. Starting from our monthly Group Meeting at 1pm, then Dinner at Hilton Eric's Restaurant at 5pm, and lastly the Gaming event at 6:30pm. This was our second Fun Event at the Gaming Room at Student Center South.

Next time, we plan to go to an off-campus restaurant and try something different!

This was our first Fun Event except for group lunch/dinners. We had a lot of fun at the on-campus UH Gaming Room at Student Center South.

We reserved 2 pooling tables for 4 hours from 5pm-9pm and 2 bowling lanes for 2 hours from 6pm-8pm. We prepared 4 large pizza, a large bag of different snacks, packs of 30 soft drink cans. My wife also helped prepare 10 gifting bags with various snacks including mooncakes; and three of them have something special as extra little bonuses. This is the first time we provide mooncakes after Covid-19 started. The last time we did it, it was three years ago in September 2019.

We really enjoyed it and look forward to having a second fun event!

Although the UH campus has fully opened since Fall 2021, most people in our group still work in a remote mode. It is time to get back to campus and mingle with each other in person rather than just 'meet' online. After the start of the Covid-19 in March 2020, we now decide to have the group (for those who live in the Houston area) to come back to the campus. Well, at least, come to the lab 2-3 days a week, among which a common day everyone comes is Tuesdays.

We started today with a group lunch at Eric's resturant in the UH Hilton hotel. This lunch is also a celebration lunch for Ali Siddique who defended his master's thesis on April 22, 2022 and graduated this May. Ali Siddique is the first (MS) student who graduated with a (MS) thesis in our group - the RPG Lab!

We also plan to have a group fun event (maybe one afternoon) this summer!

Two group photos were taken (i) at the front door of Eric's resturant and (ii) around with a UH Cougar nearby:

It was a great experience to interact with talent middle and high school students at the 8th Annual Harmony Science and Engineering Fair (H-SEF) 2022 at the Harmony Public Schools Central Office in Houston. H-SEF is an annual science fair that brings together middle and high school students across the Harmony network who have engaged in advanced research projects all year long.

Today's event is the final competition of H-SEF 2022. All the finalist students bring their posters, demos and prototypes to showcase their research outcomes. They all have demonstrated their efforts in working on their projects and presented high-quality research results. All great work completing challenging tasks!

The most impressive project is the "Intelligent Walker" in the Engineering area. The student (from Harmony School of Endeavor - Austin) has done really amazing work that involve both hardware (a real working prototype) and software (programming & wireless communication & App design on smart phones)! This project won the first place in the Senior-Engineering & Technology category.