A true innovator is someone who's able to look past how something has been done for years — decades even — and be creative enough to find a better way to do it.
From redesigning conventional lab space to seeing a niche opportunity for luxury home rentals, these three innovators to know this week have made strides in changing the game.
Caleb Bashor, professor at Rice University
Photo courtesy of Caleb Bashor
Not all labs are created equal — or affordably. Caleb Bashor, a professor at Rice University, along with seven colleagues, created a DIY lab to further research efforts based at the university.
The DIY lab, eVOLVER, comprises three modules: a customizable "smart sleeve" housing and interface for each culture vessel, a fluidic module that controls movement of liquid in and out of each culture vessel, and a modular hardware infrastructure that simplifies high-volume bi-directional data flow by decoupling each parameter into individual microcontrollers.
"The prototype 16-chamber version of eVOLVER described in the new paper cost less than $2,000, cheaper than what a lab might pay for a single continuous culture bioreactor," Bashor says. Read more about the eVOLVER here.
Sébastien Long, founder and CEO of Lodgeur
Photo courtesy of Lodgeur
Sébastien Long ended up in Houston by chance, and the city ended up being a great place to take his luxe apartment rental business plan and turn it into a reality. Houston-based Lodgeur is a rental company that takes the convenience of Airbnb and adds in the luxury experience of a hotel.
Long identified stylish apartment complexes and built his business which now has a couple properties downtown that are attractive to a niche market of clientele.
"We're roughly split between leisure guests and business travelers," Long says. "They want to feel like they're staying in a home away from home." Read more about Lodgeur here.
Gustavo Sanchez, co-founder and CEO of Pandata Tech
Photo courtesy of Pandata Tech
In oil and gas, proper data management can be the difference of millions of dollars in savings. Pandata Tech can run a data quality check for its oil and gas clients — and even engages automation and machine learning for quicker, more thorough results.
Gustavo Sanchez, co-founder and CEO of the company, is looking to bring his data systems into new industries, like health care, where data management can be hectic, overwhelming, and crucial to life-saving opportunities.
"There's so much data, and it's so noisy, that it's hard to know whether the data can be trusted or not," Sanchez says. Read more about Pandata Tech here.
The Baylor campus is next to Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park, a 37-acre project. Rendering courtesy of BCM
The Cullen Foundation donated $30 million to the project. Rendering courtesy of BCM