school of engineering

Description

The Cockrell School of Engineering's Spring 2013 Commencement ceremony was held May 17 at the Frank Erwin Center. 831 undergraduate and 405 graduate students received their degrees. The commencement address was given by Shahid Ullah. Shahid Ullah is president of Afren Resources USA Inc. and executive director of Afren PLC, an independent upstream oil and gas exploration and production company. With nearly 30 years of experience in the international energy sector and investment banking prior to joining Afren, Ullah has held senior management positions at Western Atlas International Inc., Baker Hughes Inc., Randall & Dewey Inc. and Jefferies. He was also the founding president and director of Brass Exploration Unlimited and an inaugural executive of PetroAlliance, a Russian-American joint venture. Ullah holds a degree in petroleum engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and received executive development training at the University of Oxford and London Business School. He is a member of the Engineering Advisory Board of the Cockrell School of Engineering, and he has facilitated academic cooperation between The University of Texas at Austin and several international universities. He is the first Cockrell School alumnus to receive both the Outstanding Young Engineering Graduate (1997) and the Distinguished Engineering Graduate (2012) awards. Recognizing Ullah's passion for and belief in philanthropy, The University of Texas System Board of Regents established the Shahid and Sharon Ullah Excellence Fund in International Engineering Education in 2006, an endowed chair in the Department of Petroleum Engineering in 2013, as well as the Afren Management Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Engineering in 2011. Other UT entities have also benefited from his support, including the university's College of Liberal Arts, Department of Theatre and Dance, the Longhorn Foundation and the Department of Human Ecology. Ullah has also supported Interfaith of The Woodlands, Teach for America, and company sponsorships of Projects for Underserved Communities in Ghana, as well as the Longhorn Challenge for Developing Communities.