To be better leaders, the administration should engage its primary audience: the faculty. Graphic by Miguel Tovar/University of Houston

The world of academic research is tough. As institutional research offices juggle regulatory and financial challenges within a continually strained system, they still have to lead their respective enterprises and serve their research communities.

“Service before leadership,” said Amr Elnashai, vice president/vice chancellor for research and technology transfer at the University of Houston. “We cannot miss this very important fact – we have to serve the needs of our research communities, first, before they will trust us to lead.”

How can we better serve faculty while tackling the many challenges faced by research divisions?

Sara Bible, associate vice provost for research at Stanford University, says the best way is to continually engage faculty in the business of research.

Rule making within research

Let’s be honest – faculty don’t particularly enjoy the administrative overburden dished out by university research offices. Nor should they.

But involving faculty in the process is the quickest way to earn their cooperation.

“You will have good results if you put in the time,” said Bible. “It’s really important to be flexible with faculty and staff on campus.”

One way Bible has successfully engaged her research community is in policy development. Her office at Stanford implemented a research policy working group that spends months testing policy language and effectiveness with university faculty and staff before it is launched.

“We’ve had great results,” she said. “People want to engage and be part of the process, not just be expected to follow a rigid set of rules.”

The pre-deadline deadline

Another way to partner with faculty is to work with them to improve the proposal review cycle, for everyone knows the risks of pushing the magic button mere minutes before the deadline.

Melinda Cotton, assistant vice president for Sponsored Programs at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, recommends creating a pre-deadline deadline.

Her office worked with faculty, schools and departments to establish the submission of proposals a full seven days before their due dates. This gave the office time to strengthen merit of the research project and fix minor details that could disqualify a proposal.

“Within our School of Medicine, more than 80 percent of our proposals came in by our pre-deadline,” she said. “We work hard to communicate and advocate to faculty that we can serve them better by doing it this way, and it’s working for us.”

Ultimately, there are lots of processes university research offices have to put in place to do the business of research. But to be better leaders, the administration should engage its primary audience: the faculty.

Engagement in policy-making, for instance, gives insight into pain points and allows research offices to put the best processes in place to get the job done for everyone.

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This article originally appeared on the University of Houston's The Big Idea. Lindsay Lewis, the author of this piece, formerly served as the executive director of communications for the UH Division of Research.


Faculty in academia shouldn't be hesitant to follow their entrepreneurial goals just because it may be difficult to balance the two worlds. Graphic by Miguel Tovar/University of Houston

University of Houston: Tips for balancing faculty and founder life

Houston voices

Finding balance in your professional life and your dreams can be hard for anyone. Faculty in academia, hoping to become entrepreneur and start their own companies, find this especially difficult. Finding this balance is essential to having success both professionally and in entrepreneurial endeavors.

Amy J. Ko, a professor at the University of Washington Information School and Co-Founder of AnswerDash, said in a post on her Bits and Behavior blog that she found parallels between being an entrepreneur and being a professor that helped her start her technology company.

Here are four parallels between startup life and faculty life that Ko found striking.

1. Fundraising.

"I spend a significant amount of my time seeking funding, carefully articulating problems with the status quo and how my ideas will solve these problems. The surface features of the work are different—in business, we pitch these ideas in slide decks, elevators, whereas in academia, we pitch them as NSF proposals and DARPA white papers—but the essence of the work is the same: it requires understanding the nature of a problem well enough that you can persuade someone to provide you resources to understand it more deeply and ultimately address it."

2. Experimentation.

"Research requires a high degree of iteration and experimentation, driven by carefully formed hypotheses. Startups are no different. We are constantly generating hypotheses about our customers, our end users, our business plan, our value, and our technology, and conducting experiments to verify whether the choice we've made is a positive or negative one."

3. Learning.

"Both academia and startups require a high degree of learning. As a professor, I'm constantly reading and learning about new discoveries and new technologies that will change the way I do my own research. As a founder, and particularly as a CTO, I find myself engaging in the same degree of constant learning, in an effort to perfect our product and our understanding of the value it provides."

4. Teaching.

"The teaching I do as a CTO is comparable to the teaching I do as a Ph.D. advisor in that the skills I'm teaching are less about specific technologies or processes, and more about ways of thinking about and approaching problems."

Ko also mentions the distinct differences between the two are the pace, the outcomes, and the consequences.

Finding Balance as a Professor and Entrepreneur

Alaina G. Levine, an award-winning entrepreneur, science journalist, and STEM careers consultant said in a Science Mag blog post that the key to success is to find ways to balance the two worlds.

"Issues of intellectual property ownership, human resources protocols, and time management, as well as the challenge of keeping a delineated barrier between professorial and business activities can be difficult to manage, but these concerns shouldn't prevent academics from seeking to create a startup company," Levine said in the blog post.

How to Balance Entrepreneurship and Faculty Responsibilities

According to Levine, these are a few things to consider before perusing entrepreneurship in order to successfully balance professorial and entrepreneurial activities:

1. Know your priorities

"If you are a professor who ponders whether your research can be developed into a technology that can be commercialized, your initial step should be to ponder your priorities. Do you want to stay in academia? Do you desire a career in industry? Deciding these choices early on, even before the lawyers and university representatives get involved, is crucial to forging a balance and a satisfying career."

2. Figuring out what path to take

"To wrangle the options and make it through the multiverse of marketing and manufacturing without sacrificing professorial duties, an academic's initial stop should be their institution's office of technology transfer (OTT). The OTT can assist faculty with understanding how much time they can spend on outside endeavors and how it must be structured. Technology transfer professionals also provide insight into patent law and can help professors navigate intellectual property (IP) issues."

3. Managing potential conflicts of interest

"Once you engage in entrepreneurship, you must create a distinct separation between your university lab and your company's facilities. IP can't flow freely between the two, and neither can labor—your grad students cannot work for you in your group and intern at your company at the same time. Safeguards that prevent mingling are necessary for legal purposes, say experts, as well as to synthesize a balance between being in academia and being in business."

4. Getting a Return on Investment on the faculty side

"Even with a targeted separation of academic and business endeavors, pursuing commercialization can actually enhance your skills in education. The connections that faculty make not only help the students but benefit the department and university as a whole as well."

What's The Big Idea?

Faculty in academia shouldn't be hesitant to follow their entrepreneurial goals just because it may be difficult to balance the two worlds. Take what you already know as a professor and apply it to your new venture as an entrepreneur. Also, know where your priorities lie, what path you're taking, watch out for conflicts of interest and make sure you, your students and university are all getting something out of it.

According to both writers, universities and research go hand in hand and both are "of critical importance" to the advancement of our society. So, is your research impactful? If the answer is yes, go for it.

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This article originally appeared on the University of Houston's The Big Idea. Cory Thaxton is the communications coordinator for The Division of Research.

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New peer-to-peer grocery app launches in Katy with plans to expand

local goods

If computer scientist and mobile applications developer Arfhan Ahmad has his way, his burgeoning Houston-based startup, QuickPantri, will be directly responsible for adding to the definition of what it truly means to be neighborly.

“Fast delivery from next door” — that’s the tagline for Ahmad’s hyperlocal grocery platform, which focuses on solving last-mile access, neighborhood commerce and food affordability.

“I’m passionate about combining technology with real-world problems, especially those that impact working families and underserved communities,” Ahmad says. “I moved to Houston two years ago, and here I realized that grocery stores are far from the neighborhoods.”

Ahmad envisions QuickPantri will help people who need grocery items urgently, sparing them a trip to the store or costly delivery fees by letting them source items directly from their neighbors’ cupboards.

With his new peer-to-peer app, members — especially those tethered to their residence due to disability or immobility or those unable to make grocery runs with children in tow — can simply log on to QuickPantri and purchase grocery items from their own neighbors.

“My initial thought was, 'What if we have an app that allows people to open a grocery store at their own home and sell any essential items to other neighbors?'” Ahmad says. “So, after having this idea in my mind, I asked my neighbors, 'If I sell groceries from my home, would you buy them from me?' And most of them gave me positive responses. After doing some surveys online on the Nextdoor app and Facebook, I started building this app.”

And like a good neighbor, Ahmad launched QuickPantri in his own neighborhood in Katy.

He then looked at scaling, first by securing approvals from Harris County to sell pre-packaged grocery items from his home. The response exceeded his own expectations. In the last two months, Ahmad estimates that he has delivered to 250 homes in the Katy area. Ahmad has seen that most customers use the app in search of late-night snacks and drinks.

“Ninety-five percent of those orders were delivered in 15 to 30 minutes … Our plan is to expand in other high-risk communities and other cities,” Ahmad says.

To date, Ahmad has obtained approvals from Arizona, Utah and Nevada.

He’s in the process of launching version two. Starting September 1, other sellers will be able to join the app and apply to sell goods to their neighbors. Ahmad says he currently has 50 sellers on the waitlist.

Each seller is allotted a potential selling radius of 10 minutes to ensure swift delivery. Also, sellers are required to deliver the goods via bicycle or on foot, making QuickPantri a pollution-free delivery option.

Currently, the app only sells pre-packaged items and sellers are required to show the expiration date in photos. The app utilizes AI to check pricing for goods in the area, and Ahmad says the app typically lists prices lower than what AI predicts.

Outside of geographic reach and number of buyers and sellers, Ahmad also hopes to expand the list of items that can be sold on the app to include clothes, electronics and cleaning supplies.

“We want our seller to be the ultimate source,” Ahmad says.

2 Houston universities excel on 2026 list of best U.S. colleges

Best in Class

Two top-tier Houston universities have been inducted into a new "hall of fame" list of the best colleges in the U.S. for 2026.

Rice University and the University of Houston were both praised in The Princeton Review's "The Best 391 Colleges: 2026 Edition."

Released August 12, the comprehensive guide annually ranks the best universities across 50 categories based on a survey of 170,000 current college students. Survey questions cover topics such as a school's academics and administration, student quality of life, politics, campus life, city life, extracurricular opportunities, and social environment.

The Princeton Review did not numerically rank the schools overall, but it does report the top 25 schools (out of the total 391) for each of the 50 different categories. The report also clarifies that while schools did not pay to be included in the guide, they could pay for a "featured" designation. Neither Houston university paid to be featured on the list.

Rice University, Houston's most prestigious private institution, appeared in the overall 391 best colleges list, and it also appeared in the regional "Best Southwest" list, the "Best Value Colleges" list, and the "Colleges That Create Futures" list. Rice's overall quality and its academic integrity are what students say are its greatest strengths. Students are additionally encouraged to think creatively — and even unconventionally — about how to approach course assignments.

"There's also an outside-the-box thinking when it comes to assessments, like 'the option to make a 30 minute scientific podcast instead of taking the final,' explains one sophomore," the school's profile says. "This isn't unusual for first-years either; one notes that 'instead of doing a bunch of writing and essays, I was tasked with creating...a TED Talk, which really lit a creative flame in me.'"

Rice students can brag about attending a school with the seventh best college newspaper and the 10th best college dorms and quality of life out of all colleges nationwide. The university's financial aid is also the ninth best in the country.

Here's how Rice fared in other Princeton Review rankings:

  • No. 14 – Top 50 Best Value Private Colleges
  • No. 14 – Lots of Race/Class Interaction
  • No. 17 – Best College Radio Station
  • No. 18 – Top 20 Best Value Private Colleges without Financial Aid
  • No. 19 – Best Science Lab Facilities
  • No. 23 – Best-Run Colleges
  • No. 25 – Students Study the Most

Rice has recently earned praise in a separate 2026 ranking of the best universities in the world, and its MBA program scored highly in The Princeton Review's 2025 best business schools list.

University of Houston also appeared in The Princeton Review's "Best Value Colleges," "Best Southwest," "Green Colleges," and "Colleges That Create Futures" lists. Students at this university also benefit from having the No. 1 undergraduate entrepreneurship program in the nation.

"Whether you're in or out-of-state, students consider their school to be 'not very expensive for the quality of education you're getting,' and the constant improvements help 'you feel like your degree is appreciating in value over time along with the school itself," the university's profile says.

Here's how University of Houston performed in other rankings:

  • No. 20 – Students Love Their School Teams
  • No. 21 – Scotch and Soda, Hold the Scotch (this list measured schools based on "the use of hard liquor" as reported by student surveys)
  • No. 22 – Cancel the Keg (this list measured "how widely beer is used" at schools based on student survey results)
  • No. 22 – Pot's Not Hot (this list ranked colleges with the "least marijuana usage based on ratings from real students about the popularity of marijuana on campus")
  • No. 25 – Most Politically Moderate Students
  • No. 42 – Top 50 Best Value Public Colleges
Unfortunately, UH ranked No. 11 in The Princeton Review's ranking of schools where financial aid is "not so great." However, there is plenty else to appreciate about this high performing university.

Other Texas universities included in The Princeton Review are:

  • University of Texas at Austin
  • Southwestern University in Georgetown
  • Texas State University in San Marcos
  • Trinity University in San Antonio
  • Texas A&M University in College Station
  • Angelo State University in San Angelo
  • Baylor University in Waco
  • Texas Christian University in Fort Worth
  • Southern Methodist University in Dallas
  • The University of Texas at Dallas in Richardson
  • University of Dallas in Irving
  • Austin College in Sherman
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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Intuitive Machines partners with Houston college for workforce training

space training

Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based space technology, infrastructure and services company, has forged a partnership with San Jacinto College to develop a program for training workers to handle biopharmaceutical materials delivered to Earth on Intuitive Machines’ re-entry vehicle.

Intuitive Machines is working with biotech company Rhodium Scientific on the project. Rhodium, also based in Houston, is developing biomanufacturing payloads for Intuitive Machines’ re-entry vehicle.

“Delivering life-improving pharmaceuticals from orbit is only valuable with reliable recovery and processes on Earth,” Tim Crain, chief technology officer at Intuitive Machines, said in a news release. “That requires more than a spacecraft — it demands the workforce, facilities, and regulatory alignment to support safe, repeatable operations. San Jacinto College has the credibility and technical depth to make this vision a reality.”

San Jacinto College provides training certified by the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training. Christopher Wild, assistant vice chancellor and vice president of biotechnology at San Jacinto College, said that with this certification and the college’s presence at Houston Spaceport, the school “is uniquely positioned to train the workforce needed (for) commercial space-based pharma recovery.”

The first-phase grant supporting Intuitive Machines’ Earth re-entry program will culminate in a full-scale mockup tailored to real payloads and use cases in early 2026.

Intuitive Machines said the collaborations with San Jacinto College and Rhodium “aim to align future landing infrastructure, research opportunities, and funding pathways that deliver lasting economic impact from space.”