UH names engineering founding director

The University of Houston (UH) has named Phaneendra Kondapi as founding director of engineering programs at the University of Houston at Katy.

Image of Kondapi, from UH.

Kondapi, a veteran engineering educator who helped develop the nation’s first subsea engineering program at UH, is returning to the university after serving as director of subsea engineering at Texas A&M University for the past year.

The UH Cullen College of Engineering began offering two energy-focused engineering courses at the Houston Community College (HCC) Northwest-Katy Campus last fall, in advance of the planned opening of a new UH System facility in Katy in 2018. The UH System site will be home to UH Katy and the University of Houston-Victoria in Katy. The graduate-level course offerings are focused on areas in high demand in Houston's Energy Corridor, including petroleum, subsea, electrical and environmental engineering.

Five graduate-level classes will be offered at the HCC Katy campus this fall, in electrical engineering, subsea engineering and environmental engineering. Kondapi will teach one of the subsea courses, flow assurance.

“Dr. Kondapi was vital to developing the first subsea engineering program in the US here at the Cullen College. I am tremendously proud that he will now help to bring our top-ranked engineering programs to the Katy community,” says Joseph. W. Tedesco, Elizabeth D. Rockwell Dean of the Cullen College of Engineering.

Kondapi taught the UH subsea engineering program’s inaugural course, flow assurance, in 2011, and has worked on to standardize global subsea education through the UH-led Global Subsea Education Alliance.

Formerly an adjunct professor of subsea engineering, Kondapi has more than 20 years of experience managing engineering projects at energy industry giants FMC Technologies and KBR.

He says he wants students to learn not just the technical material but to gain an enthusiasm for the field. “My motivation is to make my students successful by encouraging them to get ready for industry,” says Kondapi.

Kondapi was awarded the 2013 SPE Teaching Excellence Award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) International, which recognizes petroleum engineering faculty who have demonstrated innovative teaching techniques and creative pedagogy methods in the classroom.

The HCC building in Katy is easily accessible for Energy Corridor professionals pursuing degrees or certificates to enhance their skills. "We are here in Katy to serve both the community and the industry to improve their technical and engineering careers," says Kondapi.