This week's Houston innovators to know includes Tudor Palaghita of Camppedia, Robert Kester of Honeywell, and Ed Wooten of Smith. Photos courtesy

This week's Houston innovators to know are all using technology — but in completely different ways and across various sectors.

From creating a circular and sustainable economy for your company's technology to an online platform for your child's various activities — and even a socially distant way of checking temperatures — here is this week's who's who of Houston innovation.

Tudor Palaghita, CEO and founder of Camppedia

Tudor Palaghita has advanced his startup, Camppedia, so that parents can have virtual and in-person activities for their kids this summer. Photo courtesy of Camppedia

Like most of the world, Tudor Palaghita's year isn't going as planned. The founder of Camppedia — an online marketplace and tool for parents finding and managing their kids' activities — was hoping this summer was going to be his company's break-out moment and proof of concept. Instead, he's had to act quickly and pivot to focus on community and virtual opportunities.

"If anything, the pandemic forced us to move a lot of things forward," Palaghita says on the recent episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "The focus on the community was also something coming earlier than planned, but it was the most wonderful thing to come out of this. It really feels like everybody came together to give and to help each other."

Camppedia's business model is to give local camp and program providers — mostly small businesses, Palaghita says — a place to seamlessly reach parents. Now, these providers need Camppedia's platform more than ever as parents seek options a as they return to work or continue to look for at-home entertainment for their kids. Click here to read more.

Robert Kester, founder of Rebellion Photonics and president and general manager at Honeywell

Robert Kester found a new use for his temperature monitoring tech he created for the oil and gas industry. Photo courtesy of Honeywell

As the pandemic began to spread across the country, Robert Kester saw an opportunity for his technology he built for the oil and gas industry. Kester founded Rebellion Photonics, which Honeywell acquired in December of last year, and the company's ThermoRebellion temperature software uses infrared imaging technology and artificial intelligence to quickly conduct non-invasive screenings of people before they enter offices, banks, airports, as businesses begin to reopen.

"The key component is our software powered by artificial intelligence," Kester tells InnovationMap. "Our imaging systems leverage a decade of experience in the most advanced imaging technologies for gas leak detection, fire detection, and intrusion monitoring applications. The system features uncooled high-resolution FPA infrared sensors allowing for each pixel to be assessed for temperature."

By Kester's and his team's estimates, the ThermoRebllion system will be ready to deploy as early as June. Click here to read more.

Ed Wooten, director of IT asset disposition at Smith

Building a circular economy for electronics requires attention to detail in the areas of design, buyback, or return systems, advanced recycling and recapturing, durability and repair, and urban mining, writes Ed Wooten. Photo courtesy of Smith

For 20 years, Ed Wooten has worked to help clients figure out how to navigate the processes of buyback, recycling, and repair in order to create sustainable and profitable solutions to reduce e-waste.

"The world produces 40 million tons of e-waste annually, and only 20 percent of that is being disposed of properly," Wooten writes in a guest column for InnovationMap. "A circular economy is a system in which all materials and components are kept at their highest value and where e-waste is essentially designed out of the system."

Wooten gives his advice for creating a circular economy. Click here to read more.

Tudor Palaghita has advanced his startup, Camppedia, so that parents can have virtual and in-person activities for their kids this summer. Photo courtesy of Camppedia

Online camp and programming marketplace pivots amid pandemic to help Houston parents

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 33

This summer was supposed to be Houston-based Camppedia's breakout moment — a chance for CEO and Founder Tudor Palaghita to prove the company's value to its users. Palaghita is still getting to provide a much needed service to parents looking to enroll their children into enriching summer programs, but in a much different capacity thanks to COVID-19.

Camppedia — which Palaghita founded with his sister, Ana, in late 2018 — is an online marketplace that acts as a one-stop shop for parents looking for and managing local programming and activities for their kids. As the pandemic began to derail after school activities and summer plans, Palaghita quickly pivoted to provide essential needs like virtual offerings and connecting community members with new resources.

"If anything, the pandemic forced us to move a lot of things forward," Palaghita says about some of the key implementations he's made to the site. "The focus on the community was also something coming earlier than planned, but it was the most wonderful thing to come out of this. It really feels like everybody came together to give and to help each other."

Camppedia's business model is to give local camp and program providers — mostly small businesses, Palaghita says — a place to seamlessly reach parents. Now, these providers need Camppedia's platform more than ever as parents seek options a as they return to work or continue to look for at-home entertainment for their kids.

In order to better inform providers with what parents are looking for, Palaghita created a survey for parents to express what their concerns are, including when they are ready for in-person camps, what kind of safety measures they want to see, what are their thoughts on virtual programs are, and more.

"We're helping the community understand what parents think so that we can provide the best avenues and information and so providers can tune their programs to meet those needs," Palaghita says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast.

Palaghita shares how he's managed throughout the pandemic and his plans for growing Camppedia throughout these challenges. Listen to the full interview with Palaghita below — or wherever you get your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.


From personal and consumer technology to B2B companies ready to scale, here's who to watch in Houston tech. Getty Images

5 emerging tech startups in Houston to keep an eye on

up and comers

When it comes to Houston's tech startups, it's as diverse as Houston's population. There are software-as-a-service companies, new mobile technology, and even virtual reality startups that all call Houston home.

Here's a roundup of these Houston companies that you need to keep an eye on.

Hamper

Houston-based Hamper, which makes dry cleaning convenient, won the Rockets and BBVA Compass' LaunchPad competition. Courtesy of Hamper

Despite working most summers in his family's dry cleaning shop, Safir Ali wasn't thinking about taking over his family business. He was living his young professional life with a freshly minted degree from Texas A&M University and a corporate job. However, when he started thinking of all the modern conveniences available now — RedBox, ridesharing, delivery apps — he couldn't help but think of how antiquated dry cleaning was compared.

Ali and his brother hope to upgrade dry cleaning with their startup, Hamper. Ali describes it as "the Red Box of dry cleaning." Customers can deposit their dry cleaning in a kiosk in their office building, and it will be delivered straight to their suite. Originally, Safir thought the kiosks could be stand-alones, but it proved to be easier to partner with high-traffic office spaces, like those in the busy Galleria or over in Williams Tower.

The company has gained some traction — and even some prize money. Hamper won first place in the 2019 LaunchPad Contest, which was sponsored by the Houston Rockets and BBVA Compass. The win brought in a $10,000 prize, along with a consultation with Rockets and BBVA Compass executives and a host of other prizes.

Read more about Hamper here.

Pandata Tech

Houston-based Pandata Tech uses its machine learning technology to advance oil and gas operations. Photo courtesy of Pandata Tech

Drilling data can be muddled and hard to use, but Houston-based Pandata Tech has developed the technology to clean and automate data collection for its oil and gas clients. But Gustavo Sanchez, co-founder and CEO of the company, is looking to take his technology into other industries.

The Pandata team is now expanding to fields like defense and healthcare, which also generate hundreds of thousands of data points that need it be checked. The unique challenges of working with large drilling rigs have translated well to working with aircrafts. And the healthcare field is similar — with the Texas Medical Center, Houston's medical research centers can benefit from hastening the process of data validation.

"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.

Camppedia

Camppedia, a Houston-based startup, can help match kids to summer camps all around town. Photos courtesy of Camppedia

Probably the least fun thing about summer camp is finding and booking the summer camp. Of course, this responsibility falls on the busy adults' to-do lists. Two Houston parents, Tudor Palaghita and his sister Ana, wanted to create a solution for the overwhelming process.

"We're working parents, we're strapped on time, but we want to make sure we give our kids enriching experiences," explains Ana. "One spring, we were going through the [camp search] process, and we talked about how difficult it was. And the next spring, we said, there's something here. We feel this pain, our friends feel this pain, and no one is helping us. Why don't we solve our problem ourselves?"

And that's exactly what they did. The duo used their business and technology backgrounds — Ana has an MBA from Northwestern University and built a successful career in a major financial institution, and Tudor has his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech — to launch Camppedia.com. The site is intended to be a one-stop shop for parents looking for camps for their children.

The tool launched in March of 2019, coinciding with spring break. Currently, it offers options throughout central Houston. Parents can select camps for their children based on interests, their ZIP codes, cost or even those that offer extended hours for moms and dads with full-time jobs.

Read more about Camppedia here.

HTX Labs

VR training startup, HTX Labs, recently brought on Houston-based Solvay GBU Peroxides North America as a client. Trainees can work on a digitized version of the plant that looks as real as could be. Courtesy of HTX Labs

Virtual and augmented reality training in industrial settings is on the rise as the process and technology allows for quicker training and minimized risk. Houston-based startup HTX Labs LLC is one of the tech companies at the forefront of the VR-infused modernization of workplace training. Among its customers are the United States Air Force, Mastercard, Rackspace, and Houston-based Solvay GBU Peroxides North America, a maker of hydrogen peroxide.

At its core, the company's VR training zeroes in on the trainee, providing engaging, interactive experiences that stress "learning by doing," Scott Schneider, founder and CEO of HTX Labs, says. Training programs that have been around for decades are "designed for trainers, not necessarily for trainees," he says.

Read more about HTX Labs here.

Lodgeur

Lodgeur provides its guests with hotel luxury with room to breathe. Courtesy of Lodgeur

Travelers are usually faced with a decision to make: Privacy and homeliness of an apartment rental or style and class of a hotel room. Houston-based Lodgeur hopes to exist to have the best of both worlds. With Houston's busy business travel industry, founcer Sébastien Long knew he was starting in a good market.

"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."

The first guests arrived in mid-April. Long wanted to open by managing just a few properties, to make sure the company could ensure great guest experiences.

Read more about Lodgeur here.

Camppedia, a Houston-based startup, can help match kids to summer camps all around town. Educational First Steps/Facebook

Houston startup is using technology to connect parents to local summer programs for their children

Camp Finder

Tudor Palaghita and his sister Ana are both parents and both busy professionals. And both used the same word when it came to finding camps to help their kids pass the long, steamy summer: painful.

"We're working parents, we're strapped on time, but we want to make sure we give our kids enriching experiences," explains Ana. "One spring, we were going through the [camp search] process, and we talked about how difficult it was. And the next spring, we said, there's something here. We feel this pain, our friends feel this pain, and no one is helping us. Why don't we solve our problem ourselves?"

And that's exactly what they did. The duo used their business and technology backgrounds — Ana has an MBA from Northwestern University and built a successful career in a major financial institution, and Tudor has his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech — to launch Camppedia.com. The site is intended to be a one-stop shop for parents looking for camps for their children.

The tool launched in March of 2019, coinciding with spring break. Currently, it offers options throughout central Houston. Parents can select camps for their children based on interests, their ZIP codes, cost or even those that offer extended hours for moms and dads with full-time jobs.

"We believe the most important aspect to building anything is to understand your users," says Tudor, who left his research and development job at a major oil and gas services company to work full-time on Camppedia. "Before we launched, we did a lot of interviews and talked to a lot of parents, and then hand sketched prototypes to better convey our idea."

The pair went one step further after that, speaking with camp providers, seeking input about not only their products, but also the issue they faced in terms of marketing or registration. Following that fact-finding mission, they built Camppedia to show as many options as possible for families who want to book activities, as well as giving users the option to build their own calendars, save favorite options and see what camps actually have spots available. When parents select a camp, they are then driven to the individual camp's website to book.

Development on Camppedia, which is a member company at Station Houston, began last September, when the duo began looking at what to include on the site and finding partners who could assist them in building it.

"We looked at a bunch of different paths from a technology perspective," says Ana, who works on the site from her home in Virginia. "Because you can build the sort of the fancy, what I'd call destination-technology architecture, or you could build something scrappier, and I think we landed on something scrappy because we are still learning. Chances are [going forward] we'll change quite a bit."

Camppedia is built on WordPress, and currently features more than 275 camps from large to small. Tudor and Ana have been making improvements ever since, but the response has been enthusiastic. Parents, the pair say, have loved having so much information in one place. And camps have actually come to them, seeking information about how to be listed. That led to the creation of a camp partnership category, where camps can pay to use certain features on Camppedia's site, such as the ability to reach out to interested parents.

Going forward, the duo look forward to further building Camppedia as a resource. They're looking at adding reviews and experiences from parents, as well as finding ways to take the concept nationwide. But they're really happy with how the site has grown and the response they've had. The business, they insist, is designed to be a service that will support parents as they try to make the best decisions they can for their children.

"While the road ahead is daunting," says Tudor. "We are super excited about the possibility of building something truly useful for working parents who nowadays are struggling with so many competing priorities and whose needs seem to be somewhat overlooked by the digital reinvention coming out of Silicon Valley."


Photos courtesy of Camppedia

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Annual student startup competition in Houston names teams for 2023

getting pitch perfect

Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship has named the 42 student startup teams that were extended invitations to compete in the 23rd annual Rice Business Plan Competition

The 2023 startup competition will take place on Rice University campus May 11 to 13, and the teams representing 37 universities from six countries will pitch to investors, mentors, and other industry leaders for the chance to win funding and prizes. Last year's RBPC doled out nearly $2 million in investment prizes.

This year, Rice saw its largest number of student startups applying for the RBPC internal qualifier from within campus. The university selected three to move on to compete at RBPC in May — Sygne Solutions, Neurnano Therapeutics, and Tierra Climate, which also received a total of $5,000 in cash prizes to these top three teams.

The 2023 RBPC will focus on five categories: energy, cleantech and sustainability; life science and health care solutions; consumer products and services; hard tech; and digital enterprise.

This invited companies, if they attend, will join the ranks of the 784 teams that previously competed in RBPC and have raised more than $4.6 billion in capital, as well as seen more than 50 successful exits including five IPOs.

The 2023 Rice Business Plan Competition invitees, according to Rice University's news release:

  • Active Surfaces, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Adrigo Insights, Saint Mary’s University (Canada)
  • AirSeal, Washington University in St. Louis
  • Algbio, Yeditepe University (Turkey)
  • Arch Pet Food, University of Chicago
  • Astria Biosciences, University of Pittsburgh
  • Atma Leather, Yale University
  • Atop, UCLA
  • Biome Future, University of Florida
  • BioSens8, Boston University
  • BlueVerse, Texas Tech University
  • Boardible, Northwestern University
  • Boston Quantum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • ceres plant protein cereal, Tulane University
  • Citrimer, University of Michigan
  • Dart Bioscience, University of Oxford (United Kingdom)
  • DetoXyFi, Harvard University
  • E-Sentience, Duke University
  • Edulis Therapeutics, Carnegie Mellon University
  • FluxWorks, Texas A&M University
  • Integrated Molecular Innovations, Michigan Technological University
  • Inzipio, RWTH Aachen University (Germany)
  • LoopX AI, University of Waterloo (Canada)
  • Magnify Biosciences, Carnegie Mellon University
  • MiraHeart, Johns Hopkins University
  • MyLÚA, Cornell University
  • Outmore Living, University of Texas
  • Pathways, Harvard University
  • Pediatrica Therapeutics, University of Arkansas
  • Perseus Materials, Stanford University
  • Pike Robotics, University of Texas
  • Quantanx, Arizona State University
  • Sheza, San Diego State University
  • Skali, Northwestern University
  • Sundial Solar Components, University of Utah
  • Thryft Ship, University of Georgia
  • Tierra Climate, Rice University
  • TrashTrap Sustainability Solutions, Visvesvaraya Technological University (India)
  • Unchained, North Carolina A&T State University
  • Unsmudgeable, Babson College
  • Vivicaly, University of Pennsylvania
  • Zaymo, Brigham Young University

Houston space health institute to launch more experiments into space on upcoming mission

ready for takeoff

Houston's Translational Research Institute for Space Health, or TRISH, will launch six more experiments into space this spring aboard Axiom Space's Ax-2 mission, the organization announced this week.

The biomedical research conducted through TRISH, in consortium with CalTeach and MIT, will look into how space travel impacts everything from motion sickness to memory over the course of the mission's 10-day stint on the International Space Station.

The crew will consist of four astronauts: Commander Peggy Whitson (previously with NASA), Pilot John Shoffner and Mission Specialists Ali AlQarni and Rayyanah Barnawi. It's a historic team, bringing the first female private space crew commander and the first Saudi astronauts to the ISS.

“Insights gathered from this work improve our understanding of how the human body and mind respond to spaceflight, helping us to prepare future astronauts to remain safe and healthy during longer-duration missions," Dr. Dorit Donoviel, TRISH executive director and professor in the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, says in a statement.

The six projects onboard the mission have been developed by researchers within TRISH as well as the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University and Baylor College of Medicine. They aim to assess the following:

  • Spaceflight participants’ performance in memory, abstraction, spatial orientation, emotion recognition, risk decision making and sustained attention before and after the mission -Astronauts’ inner ears and eyes' response to motion before and after space travel and how this relates to motion sickness and nausea during launch and landing
  • The effects of spaceflight on the human body at the genomic level
  • Changes to the eyes and brain during spaceflight
  • Astronaut's sleep, personality, health history, team dynamics and immune-related symptoms
  • Sensorimotor abilities and changes in space and how this can impact astronauts' ability to stand, balance and have full body control on the moon

Some of this information will become part of TRISH’s Enhancing eXploration Platforms and ANalog Definition, or EXPAND, program, which aims to boost human health on commercial space flights through its database. The program launched in 2021.

Ax-2 is Axiom's second all-private astronaut mission to the ISS and will launch out of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. Axiom was first established in 2016 with the goal of building the world's first commercial space station.

TRISH is also slated to launch nine experiments on board SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission, which is now expected to launch this summer. The research aboard Polaris Dawn is intended to complement research supported by TRISH on the Inspiration4 all-civilian mission to orbit, which was also operated by SpaceX in 2021.

Houston research: It matters how we talk about social, economic disparities

houston voices

Look closely at any news article about inequality and you will quickly notice that there is more than one way to describe what is happening.

For example:

“In 2022, men earned $1.18 for every dollar women earned.”

“In 2022, women earned 82 cents for every dollar men earned.”

“In 2022, the gender wage gap was 18 cents per dollar.”

When pointing out differences in access to resources and opportunities among groups of people, we tend to use three types of language:

  1. Advantaged — Describes an issue in terms of advantages the more dominant group enjoys.
  2. Disadvantaged — Describes an issue in terms of disadvantages the less dominant group experiences.
  3. Neutrality — Stays general enough to avoid direct comparisons between groups of people.

The difference between these three lenses, referred to as “frames” in academic literature, may be subtle. We may miss it completely when skimming a news article or listening to a friend share an opinion. But frames are more significant than we may realize.

“Frames of inequality matter because they shape our view of what is wrong and what should be fixed,” says Rice Business Professor Sora Jun.

Jun led a research team that conducted multiple studies to understand which of the three frames people typically use to describe social and economic inequality. In total, they analyzed more than 19,000 mainstream media articles and surveyed more than 600 U.S.-based participants.

In Chronic frames of social inequality: How mainstream media frame race, gender, and wealth inequality, the team published two major findings.

First, people tend to describe gender and racial inequality using the language of disadvantage. For example, “The data showed that officers pulled over Black drivers at a rate far out of proportion to their share of the driving-age population.”

Jun’s team encountered the same rhetorical tendency with gender inequality. In most cases, people describe instances of gender inequality (e.g., the gender pay gap) in terms of a disadvantage for women. We are far more likely to use the statement “Women earned 82 cents for every dollar men earned” than “Men earned $1.18 cents for every dollar women earned.”

"We expected that people would use the disadvantage framework to describe racial and gender inequalities, and it turned out to be true,” says Jun. “We think that the reason for this stems from how legitimate we perceive different hierarchies to be.” Because demographic categories like gender and race are unrelated to talent or effort, most people find it unfair that resources are distributed unevenly along these lines.

On the other hand, Jun expected people to describe wealth inequality in terms of advantage rather than disadvantage. The public typically considers this form of inequality to be more fair than racial or gender inequality. “In the U.S., there is still a widespread belief in economic mobility — that if you work hard enough, you can change the socioeconomic group you are in,” she says.

But in their second major finding, she and fellow researchers discovered that the most common frame used to describe wealth inequality was no frame at all. We find this neutrality in statements like “Disparities in education, health care and social services remain stark.”

Jun is not sure why people take a neutral approach more frequently when describing wealth inequality (speaking specifically of economic classes outside of gender and race). She suspects it has something to do with the fact that we view wealth as a fluid and continuous spectrum.

The merits of the three frames are up for debate. Using the frame of disadvantage might seem to portray issues more sympathetically, but some scholars point to potential downsides. The language of disadvantage installs the dominant group as the measuring stick for everyone else. It may also put the onus of change on the disadvantaged group while making the problem seem less relevant to the dominant group.

“When we speak about the gender gap in terms of disadvantage, and helping women earn more compared to men, we automatically assume that men are making the correct amount,” says Jun. “But maybe we should be looking at both sides of the equation.”

On the other hand, Jun cautions against using a one-size-fits-all approach to describing inequality. “We have to be careful not to jump to an easy conclusion, because the causes of inequality are so vast,” she says.

For example, men tend to interrupt conversations in team meetings at higher rates than women. “Should we frame this behavior in terms of advantage or disadvantage, which naturally leads us to prompt men to interrupt less and women to interrupt more?” asks Jun. “We really don’t know until we understand the ideal number of interruptions and why this deviation is happening. Ultimately, how we talk about inequality depends on what we want to accomplish. I hope that through this research, people will think more carefully about how they describe inequality so that they capture the full story before they act.”

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This article originally ran on Rice Business Wisdom and was based on research fromSora Jun, Rosalind M. Chow, A. Maurits van der Veen and Erik Bleich.