5 most popular innovation stories in Houston this week

What's trending

A recap of all the innovation happening at the Texas Medical Center, innovators to know, and Houston startup news trended this week. Courtesy of TMC

Editor's note: This week was full of innovation events — and there's many more coming up this month. Event coverage, innovators to know, and more startup news trended on InnovationMap this week.

3 Houston innovators to know this week

Meet this week's Houston innovators to know. Courtesy photos

This week, some key Houston innovators to know include the CEO of a tech company that's demystifying Google's SEO, a local entrepreneur who just raised millions in funding, and the newest addition to the Houston innovation ecosystem. Continue reading.

From robots to immunotherapy, TMC talks innovation at its annual address

The Texas Medical Center's CEO, Bill McKeon, ran down a list of exciting updates and innovations from the organization's member institutions at the annual State of the TMC. Photo via tmc.edu

In the Greater Houston Partnership's annual State of the Texas Medical Center address, TMC CEO Bill McKeon shared a status update of sorts for all the goings on at the largest medical center in the world.

McKeon ran down the list of member institutions to briefly touch base on each organization's innovations and growth. In the address, which took place at the Marriott Marquis on October 31, McKeon discussed exciting construction projects, new accelerator programs, and more. Continue reading.

Exclusive: The Cannon Houston restructures, brings on new executive to lead operations

Just after celebrating its new 200,000-square-foot flagship location, The Cannon Houston has named a new CEO to further grow the coworking space and startup hub. Photo courtesy of The Cannon

After celebrating the opening its flagship coworking space the same week it announced another location in downtown, startup hub and coworking company, The Cannon Houston, has another big announcement: a new CEO.

A former global consultant for KPMG, Jon Lambert has been named The Cannon's CEO. He will also support day-to-day operations at The Cannon's three locations. Meanwhile, Lawson Gow, founder of the company and former CEO, will move to president of The Cannon. Gow, who is the son of InnovationMap's parent company's CEO, will focus on partnerships and business development, as well as continuing to be the face of the company. Continue reading.

Houston biomedical startup granted $1.5M, Chevron taps into Plug and Play, and more innovation news

Money moves, big deals, and more lead this roundup of innovation news. Pexels

Hitting headlines this month are innovation news stories from battling the opioid crisis and funding to TMCx companies and Houston as a whole earning recognition. In this innovation news roundup, two Houston startups pocket some cash, Chevron links up with Plug and Play, and more. Continue reading.

10+ can't-miss Houston business and innovation events for November

From enlightening talks and conventions to networking opportunities, here's where you need to be in November. Getty Images

Looking for some help navigating an innovation-filled month in Houston? Look no further.

November is jam packed with Houston business and innovation events — from huge conventions like SpaceCom and Global Corporate Venture taking over downtown on the same days to the Digital Fight Club battling it out in Houston for the first time and The Houston Innovation Summit planning a week of programming. Continue reading.

A new robotics facility is headed for the TMC Innovation Institute. Courtesy of TMC

TMC plans to open one-of-its-kind robotics facility later this year

The robots are coming

The Texas Medical Center has announced its plans to open a new robotics-equipped laboratory in October of this year. The automation capabilities will allow for more efficient lab tests and services.

The new facility is being made possible by a partnership between the medical center, TMC Innovation Institute, and ABB, a leading robotics company. This would be Zürich-based ABB's first dedicated health care center, but the company has over 400,000 robotics products across industries in over 53 countries.

"The next-generation laboratory processes developed in Houston will speed manual medical laboratory processes, reducing and eliminating bottlenecks in laboratory work and enhancing safety and consistency," says Sami Atiya, president of ABB's Robotics and Discrete Automation business, in a news release. "This is especially applicable for new high-tech treatments, such as the cancer therapies pioneered at the Texas Medical Center, which today require manual and time-consuming test processes."

A team of 20 will work out of the 5,300-square-foot facility, which will be located in TMC Innovation Institute. The space will have an automation laboratory with robot training facilities, and meeting spaces for the human innovation partners.

Currently, ABB's robots specialize in food and beverage laboratories worldwide, but able to adapt to medical facilities for specific tasks, including "dosing, mixing, and pipetting tasks, as well as sterile instrument kitting and centrifuge loading and unloading," according to the release.

"We are proud to co-develop collaborative robotics systems for the hospital of the future with one of the world's most advanced partners and to test them in real-world laboratories to ensure they add value to healthcare professionals, driving innovation, and transforming how medical laboratories operate worldwide," says Atiya in the release.

According to the release, TMC's connection to innovation, startups, and researchers were key factors in bringing the facility to Houston. ABB Robotics has a long-term plan to invest and innovate in robotics, says Atiya in the release.

"The Texas Medical Center continues to push the boundaries of innovation with cutting-edge industry partners by establishing TMC as the epicenter for ABB Robotics' entry into the healthcare space," says Bill McKeon, president and CEO of Texas Medical Center, in the release. "We continually strive for opportunities to accelerate research and enhance clinical care through key strategic partnerships. ABB's move into the heart of the Texas Medical Center campus with this first-of-its-kind R&D facility for creating robotics solutions in healthcare will set a new course for advancements in medicine."

Automation nation

Courtesy of TMC

A team of 20 will work out of the 5,300-square-foot facility, which will be located in TMC Innovation Institute.

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UH receives $2.6M gift to support opioid addiction research and treatment

drug research

The estate of Dr. William A. Gibson has granted the University of Houston a $2.6 million gift to support and expand its opioid addiction research, including the development of a fentanyl vaccine that could block the drug's ability to enter the brain.

The gift builds upon a previous donation from the Gibson estate that honored the scientist’s late son Michael, who died from drug addiction in 2019. The original donation established the Michael C. Gibson Addiction Research Program in UH's department of psychology. The latest donation will establish the Michael Conner Gibson Endowed Professorship in Psychology and the Michael Conner Gibson Research Endowment in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.

“This incredibly generous gift will accelerate UH’s addiction research program and advance new approaches to treatment,” Daniel O’Connor, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, said in a news release.

The Michael C. Gibson Addiction Research Program is led by UH professor of psychology Therese Kosten and Colin Haile, a founding member of the UH Drug Discovery Institute. Currently, the program produces high-profile drug research, including the fentanyl vaccine.

According to UH, the vaccine can eliminate the drug’s “high” and could have major implications for the nation’s opioid epidemic, as research reveals Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) is treatable.

The endowed professorship is combined with a one-to-one match from the Aspire Fund Challenge, a $50 million grant program established in 2019 by an anonymous donor. UH says the program has helped the university increase its number of endowed chairs and professorships, including this new position in the department of psychology.

“Our future discoveries will forever honor the memory of Michael Conner Gibson and the Gibson family,” O’Connor added in the release. “And I expect that the work supported by these endowments will eventually save many thousands of lives.”

CenterPoint and partners launch AI initiative to stabilize the power grid

AI infrastructure

Houston-based utility company CenterPoint Energy is one of the founding partners of a new AI infrastructure initiative called Chain Reaction.

Software companies NVIDIA and Palantir have joined CenterPoint in forming Chain Reaction, which is aimed at speeding up AI buildouts for energy producers and distributors, data centers and infrastructure builders. Among the initiative’s goals are to stabilize and expand the power grid to meet growing demand from data centers, and to design and develop large data centers that can support AI activity.

“The energy infrastructure buildout is the industrial challenge of our generation,” Tristan Gruska, Palantir’s head of energy and infrastructure, says in a news release. “But the software that the sector relies on was not built for this moment. We have spent years quietly deploying systems that keep power plants running and grids reliable. Chain Reaction is the result of building from the ground up for the demands of AI.”

CenterPoint serves about 7 million customers in Texas, Indiana, Minnesota and Ohio. After Hurricane Beryl struck Houston in July 2024, CenterPoint committed to building a resilient power grid for the region and chose Palantir as its “software backbone.”

“Never before have technology and energy been so intertwined in determining the future course of American innovation, commercial growth, and economic security,” Jason Wells, chairman, president and CEO of CenterPoint, added in the release.

In November, the utility company got the go-ahead from the Public Utility Commission of Texas for a $2.9 billion upgrade of its Houston-area power grid. CenterPoint serves 2.9 million customers in a 12-county territory anchored by Houston.

A month earlier, CenterPoint launched a $65 billion, 10-year capital improvement plan to support rising demand for power across all of its service territories.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Houston researchers develop material to boost AI speed and cut energy use

ai research

A team of researchers at the University of Houston has developed an innovative thin-film material that they believe will make AI devices faster and more energy efficient.

AI data centers consume massive amounts of electricity and use large cooling systems to operate, adding a strain on overall energy consumption.

“AI has made our energy needs explode,” Alamgir Karim, Dow Chair and Welch Foundation Professor at the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UH, explained in a news release. “Many AI data centers employ vast cooling systems that consume large amounts of electricity to keep the thousands of servers with integrated circuit chips running optimally at low temperatures to maintain high data processing speed, have shorter response time and extend chip lifetime.”

In a report recently published in ACS Nano, Karim and a team of researchers introduced a specialized two-dimensional thin film dielectric, or electric insulator. The film, which does not store electricity, could be used to replace traditional, heat-generating components in integrated circuit chips, which are essential hardware powering AI.

The thinner film material aims to reduce the significant energy cost and heat produced by the high-performance computing necessary for AI.

Karim and his former doctoral student, Maninderjeet Singh, used Nobel prize-winning organic framework materials to develop the film. Singh, now a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University, developed the materials during his doctoral training at UH, along with Devin Shaffer, a UH professor of civil engineering, and doctoral student Erin Schroeder.

Their study shows that dielectrics with high permittivity (high-k) store more electrical energy and dissipate more energy as heat than those with low-k materials. Karim focused on low-k materials made from light elements, like carbon, that would allow chips to run cooler and faster.

The team then created new materials with carbon and other light elements, forming covalently bonded sheetlike films with highly porous crystalline structures using a process known as synthetic interfacial polymerization. Then they studied their electronic properties and applications in devices.

According to the report, the film was suitable for high-voltage, high-power devices while maintaining thermal stability at elevated operating temperatures.

“These next-generation materials are expected to boost the performance of AI and conventional electronics devices significantly,” Singh added in the release.

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