((PKG)) DAVID WARREN
((Banner: Engineering))
((Reporter/Camera: Elizabeth Lee))
((Map: Houston, Texas))
((NATS))
((David Warren, College Graduate))
It’s definitely a passion. I love playing it. It is a great way to kind of get my mind off my studies or whatever is worrying me for the day. I ended up playing college tennis. I was on scholarship to play tennis for Rice as well and it enabled me to attend the school of my dreams.
My name is David Warren. I am from Houston, Texas. I attended school in Houston as well and went to Rice University, and I studied chemical engineering. This is the main engineering building, here at Rice, and I have spent too many hours to remember how long I have been in this building. But it is one of the coolest kind of architecturally designed places on campus, and it brings back good memories and it brings back kind of long working hours as well.
I ended up kind of falling in love with engineering. Really excited to kind of work in this field and see what it is like, climate change, affordable energy, making sure that people in poverty have access to that energy, I think are some of the problems that I hope to address.
When I received my offer, it was actually via phone. It wasn’t the initial offer, it was via phone to let me know that I was going to get it. And the guy who called me said it’s going to be for a production engineering role, and it’s going to be in midland Texas which is in west Texas, in the middle of the desert. It has, it’s considered one of the biggest oil basins I think in the world.
Working out there is the hot spot to be in right now. There has kind of been, I guess what you could call an energy revolution in the United States in the last eight to ten years. Energy companies have figured out a way to extract oil and gas that they knew was under the ground, but they couldn’t get access to before. And that has unlocked all kinds of new reserves at a cheaper cost than previously thought. And in doing so, the U.S., rather than becoming a net importer of oil and natural gas, has now been able to produce so much oil and natural gas at a cheaper cost, that we can now export it to other countries.
At my new job, I will probably have less time to play tennis, but I will still play it socially. I might not be the smartest guy. I might not be the best tennis player, but I think I do a decent job making other people around me better. And bringing a good work ethic and just kind of being a straight-shooting kind of a guy. Excited to get out there, get my hands dirty, and see what it’s like.
