Two companies expand into the Houston market by way of UH's Technology Bridge

New to town

The University of Houston has transformed its Energy Research Park into the Technology Bridge to better connect research-based startups to the market. Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

A few years ago, the University of Houston renamed its Energy Research Park to the Technology Bridge. They wanted to create a program and workspace for companies inside the university to enter into the Houston innovation ecosystem. Turns out, the program also created a bridge for innovative companies entering the Houston market.

Two companies announced that they will open operations in the Technology Bridge — the first Houston offices for both, according to a news release.

Chemicals company Oleon is a subsidiary of France-based Avril, a financial and industrial company. Before the UH location, Oleon's only United States operation was a sales office in South Carolina. The other company is California-based Saratech, an engineering, software, services, and 3D printer sales company. Saratech has offices across the country, including an Austin office. The Houston office will focus on 3D printing.

According to Tom Campbell, executive director of the UH Office of Technology Transfer and Innovation, choosing a university to open a new office in a new market makes a lot of sense. There's a ready-made network of professors and students ripe with talent for internships and new and developing research.

Saratech's senior vice president, Rick Murphy, agrees that the new office can be mutually beneficial to UH and his company. Saratech already has a relationship similar to this with the University of California-Irvine.

"We are looking at universities to help with that, so industry can start educating their engineers to take advantage of this technology," Murphy says in the release.

Oleon also has previous relationships with universities in Europe and Asia. The company, which specializes in natural chemistry — specifically using fats and oils in various applications from cosmetics to automotive, plans on sustaining a lot of growth in Houston. The move represents the first of many instances of growth in the market.

"It is baby steps here, but the U.S. is a huge market," Dave Jacobs, general manager of operations for Oleon Americas, says in the release. "About 50 percent of the oil and gas market is here."

The Technology Bridge houses 23 startups and has 30,000 square feet of incubator space and over 700,000 square feet of space suited for laboratories, pilot-scale facilities, and light manufacturing. The bridge sits on the former Schlumberger campus just south of UH.

To Campbell, the bridge adds its own niche of research and lab space to the Houston innovation ecosystem as a whole, and both these companies' new offices are on par with the greater goals of the bridge.

"It's about economic development," Campbell says in the release. "A strong innovation economy is a rising tide that floats all boats."

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Play it back: Why this Houston geothermal innovator's company is set for a hot year of growth

houston innovators podcast Episode 271

Last year was one full of big wins for Fervo Energy and its CEO and co-founder, Tim Latimer. The company secured around $600 million in investment and financing across a few deals and is aiming for a 2026 delivery date of its next project.

Fervo Energy, which is built off of a unique horizontal well drilling technology, is currently scaling at around a 100x pace, as Latimer explained in May on the Houston Innovators Podcast, thanks to its latest project, Project Cape, located in Southwest Utah, that will include around 100 wells with significantly reduced drilling cost and an estimated 2026 delivery. Latimer says there are a dozen other projects like Project Cape that are in the works.

"It's a huge ramp up in our drilling, construction, and powerplant programs from our pilot project, but we've already had tremendous success there," Latimer says of Project Cape. "We think our technology has a really bright future."

Revisit the podcast episode below where Latimer talks about Fervo's fast growth and promising future.

Latimer has been bullish on geothermal as a clean energy source since he quit his job as a drilling engineer in oil and gas to pursue a dual degree program — MBA and master's in earth sciences — at Stanford University. He had decided that, with the reluctance of incumbent energy companies to try new technologies, he was going to figure out how to start his own company. Through the Stanford program and Activate, a nonprofit hardtech program that funded two years of Fervo's research and development, Latimer did just that.

"Every overnight success is a decade in the making, and I think Fervo, fortunately — and geothermal as a whole — has become much more high profile recently as people realize that it can be a tremendous solution to the challenges that our energy sector and climate are facing," he says on the Houston Innovators Podcast.

And the bet has more than paid off. In December, Fervo raised $255 million in new funding and capital availability. A $135 million corporate equity round was led by Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund II and a $120 million letter of credit and term loan facility was granted by Mercuria, an independent energy and commodity group that previously invested in the company. Read more about the round.

In addition to the raise, Fervo also announced other exciting news since the episode aired, including being named among Time Magazine's top inventions of the year and expanding its partnership with Meta.

UH researchers develop breakthrough material to boost efficiency of sodium-ion batteries

eyes on clean energy

A research lab at the University of Houston has developed a new type of material for sodium-ion batteries that could make them more efficient and boost their energy performance.

Led by Pieremanuele Canepa, Robert Welch assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UH, the Canepa Research Laboratory is working on a new material called sodium vanadium phosphate, which improves sodium-ion battery performance by increasing the energy density. Energy density is the amount of energy stored per kilogram, and the new material can do so by more than 15 percent. With a higher energy density of 458 watt-hours per kilogram — compared to the 396 watt-hours per kilogram in older sodium-ion batteries — this material brings sodium technology closer to competing with lithium-ion batteries, according to the researchers.

The Canepa Lab used theoretical expertise and computational methods to discover new materials and molecules to help advance clean energy technologies. The team at UH worked with the research groups headed by French researchers Christian Masquelier and Laurence Croguennec from the Laboratoire de Reáctivité et de Chimie des Solides, which is a CNRS laboratory part of the Université de Picardie Jules Verne, in Amiens France, and the Institut de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Bordeaux, Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France for the experimental work on the project.

The researchers then created a battery prototype using the new materia sodium vanadium phosphate, which demonstrated energy storage improvements. The material is part of a group called “Na superionic conductors” or NaSICONs, which is made to let sodium ions move in and out of the battery during charging and discharging.

“The continuous voltage change is a key feature,” Canepa says in a news release. “It means the battery can perform more efficiently without compromising the electrode stability. That’s a game-changer for sodium-ion technology.”

The synthesis method used to create sodium vanadium phosphate may be applied to other materials with similar chemistries, which could create new opportunities for advanced energy storage. A paper of this work was published in the journal Nature Materials.

"Our goal is to find clean, sustainable solutions for energy storage," Canepa adds. "This material shows that sodium-ion batteries can meet the high-energy demands of modern technology while being cost-effective and environmentally friendly."

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapital.

Houston hospital names leading cancer scientist as new academic head

new hire

Houston Methodist Academic Institute has named cancer clinician and scientist Dr. Jenny Chang as its new executive vice president, president, CEO, and chief academic officer.

Chang was selected following a national search and will succeed Dr. H. Dirk Sostman, who will retire in February after 20 years of leadership. Chang is the director of the Houston Methodist Dr. Mary and Ron Neal Cancer Center and the Emily Herrmann Presidential Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research. She has been with Houston Methodist for 15 years.

Over the last five years, Chang has served as the institute’s chief clinical science officer and is credited with strengthening cancer clinical trials. Her work has focused on therapy-resistant cancer stem cells and their treatment, particularly relating to breast cancer.

Her work has generated more than $35 million in funding for Houston Methodist from organizations like the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, according to the health care system. In 2021, Dr. Mary Neal and her husband Ron Neal, whom the cancer center is now named after, donated $25 million to support her and her team’s research on advanced cancer therapy.

In her new role, Chang will work to expand clinical and translational research and education across Houston Methodist in digital health, robotics and bioengineered therapeutics.

“Dr. Chang’s dedication to Houston Methodist is unparalleled,” Dr. Marc L. Boom, Houston Methodist president and CEO, said in a news release. “She is committed to our mission and to helping our patients, and her clinical expertise, research innovation and health care leadership make her the ideal choice for leading our academic mission into an exciting new chapter.”

Chang is a member of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Stand Up to Cancer Scientific Advisory Council. She earned her medical degree from Cambridge University in England and completed fellowship training in medical oncology at the Royal Marsden Hospital/Institute for Cancer Research. She earned her research doctorate from the University of London.

She is also a professor at Weill Cornell Medical School, which is affiliated with the Houston Methodist Academic Institute.

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