From health care to politics, here's who you need to know in Houston innovation this week. Courtesy photos

There's no summer slowdown in sight, as Houston's innovation world keeps turning. Texas Children's Hospital is amping up their attention to innovation — and so is the mayor. Meanwhile, a local software company just made a big hire. Here's what innovators you need to keep an eye on.

Myra Davis, senior vice president and chief information and innovation officer of Texas Children's Hospital

Myra Davis is responsible for Texas Children's Hospital's technology and innovation — two completely separate things, she says. Courtesy of TCH

Myra Davis wants you to realize that there's a difference between technology and innovation. As the chief information officer, she's been in charge of maintaining tech within the hospital system. However, her role has evolved to include innovation, which means thinking about what new elements TCH can bring in — or what existing elements can be improved or expanded. Read more about Davis and what TCH is up to.

Talin Bingham, CTO of Identity Automation

Talin Bingham has been named CTO of Houston-based Identity Automation. Courtesy of Identity Automation

The chief technology officer is a huge role when it comes to a software company's hierarchy. Houston-based Identity Automation just tasked Talin Bingham with the position. Bingham replaces co-founder Troy Moreland as CTO, and Moreland will support the company in an advisory capacity. Last summer, the company made a major acquisition and sees plenty of opportunities for growth. Read more about the new hire.

Mayor Sylvester Turner

Mayor Sylvester Turner gave his State of the City address on May 20. Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

Mayor Sylvester Turner and his team are innovators themselves, constantly coming up with new ideas to enhance and connect the city. The city's latest endeavor was announced last week at the Greater Houston Partnership's State of the City luncheon. Mayor Turner's idea is to have 50 corporations sponsor 50 Houston-area parks scattered across the city for five years. Up next is finding 49 more companies, since Scott McClelland of HEB offered up his company on the spot. Read the 5 things the mayor promised in the address.

Talin Bingham has been named CTO of Houston-based Identity Automation. Courtesy of Identity Automation

Houston software company hires new CTO after Q1 growth

Mover and shaker

Houston-based Identity Automation has named a new chief technology officer following growth last quarter.

Talin Bingham will replace co-founder Troy Moreland as CTO, and Moreland will support the company in an advisory capacity, according to a release.

"We are excited about the experience and wisdom that Talin brings to this role," says James Litton, CEO at Identity Automation, in the release.

"Talin is a seasoned CTO with an exceptional track record in on-time product delivery and implementation—both of which are essential to the Identity Automation 2.0 growth strategy. We are confident that his entrepreneurial spirit will help us achieve our vision of continued product evolution and rapid expansion across key markets."

Bingham has over 35 years of technical leadership — 25 of which has been in managerial roles. Prior to this appointment, he was the managing director of product and technology at Vista Consulting Group in Utah.

Identity Automation is the provider of RapidIdentity, which is a technology integration platform companies can use to accelerate the digital transformation process. The company has a global presence with tens of millions of identities in its system, which functions both on the premises and cloud resources.

Last summer, the company made its second acquisition — an enterprise single sign-on and virtual desktop platform called HealthCast Inc.

"Identity Automation has the most powerful and scalable platform in the identity management space, backed by a strong leadership team and the momentum of our recent success." Bingham says in the release.

"I'm excited to have a hand in the company's direction during such a pivotal time, ensuring we maximize the quality and delivery of engineering and do so as a cohesive, company-wide effort that make it possible to meet our full potential for growth."

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Houston team develops low-cost device to treat infants with life-threatening birth defect

infant innovation

A team of engineers and pediatric surgeons led by Rice University’s Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies has developed a cost-effective treatment for infants born with gastroschisis, a congenital condition in which intestines and other organs are developed outside of the body.

The condition can be life-threatening in economically disadvantaged regions without access to equipment.

The Rice-developed device, known as SimpleSilo, is “simple, low-cost and locally manufacturable,” according to the university. It consists of a saline bag, oxygen tubing and a commercially available heat sealer, while mimicking the function of commercial silo bags, which are used in high-income countries to protect exposed organs and gently return them into the abdominal cavity gradually.

Generally, a single-use bag can cost between $200 and $300. The alternatives that exist lack structure and require surgical sewing. This is where the SimpleSilo comes in.

“We focused on keeping the design as simple and functional as possible, while still being affordable,” Vanshika Jhonsa said in a news release. “Our hope is that health care providers around the world can adapt the SimpleSilo to their local supplies and specific needs.”

The study was published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, and Jhonsa, its first author, also won the 2023 American Pediatric Surgical Association Innovation Award for the project. She is a recent Rice alumna and is currently a medical student at UTHealth Houston.

Bindi Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric surgeon at UTMB Health, served as the corresponding author of the study. Rice undergraduates Shreya Jindal and Shriya Shah, along with Mary Seifu Tirfie, a current Rice360 Global Health Fellow, also worked on the project.

In laboratory tests, the device demonstrated a fluid leakage rate of just 0.02 milliliters per hour, which is comparable to commercial silo bags, and it withstood repeated disinfection while maintaining its structure. In a simulated in vitro test using cow intestines and a mock abdominal wall, SimpleSilo achieved a 50 percent reduction of the intestines into the simulated cavity over three days, also matching the performance of commercial silo bags. The team plans to conduct a formal clinical trial in East Africa.

“Gastroschisis has one of the biggest survival gaps from high-resource settings to low-resource settings, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” Meaghan Bond, lecturer and senior design engineer at Rice360, added in the news release. “We believe the SimpleSilo can help close the survival gap by making treatment accessible and affordable, even in resource-limited settings.”

Oxy's $1.3B Texas carbon capture facility on track to​ launch this year

gearing up

Houston-based Occidental Petroleum is gearing up to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere at its $1.3 billion direct air capture (DAC) project in the Midland-Odessa area.

Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, said during the company’s recent second-quarter earnings call that the Stratos project — being developed by carbon capture and sequestration subsidiary 1PointFive — is on track to begin capturing CO2 later this year.

“We are immensely proud of the achievements to date and the exceptional record of safety performance as we advance towards commercial startup,” Hollub said of Stratos.

Carbon dioxide captured by Stratos will be stored underground or be used for enhanced oil recovery.

Oxy says Stratos is the world’s largest DAC facility. It’s designed to pull 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air and either store it underground or use it for enhanced oil recovery. Enhanced oil recovery extracts oil from unproductive reservoirs.

Most of the carbon credits that’ll be generated by Stratos through 2030 have already been sold to organizations such as Airbus, AT&T, All Nippon Airways, Amazon, the Houston Astros, the Houston Texans, JPMorgan, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and TD Bank.

The infrastructure business of investment manager BlackRock has pumped $550 million into Stratos through a joint venture with 1PointFive.

As it gears up to kick off operations at Stratos, Occidental is also in talks with XRG, the energy investment arm of the United Arab Emirates-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., to form a joint venture for the development of a DAC facility in South Texas. Occidental has been awarded up to $650 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to build the South Texas DAC hub.

The South Texas project, to be located on the storied King Ranch, will be close to industrial facilities and energy infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. Initially, the roughly 165-square-mile site is expected to capture 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, with the potential to store up to 3 billion metric tons of CO2 per year.

“We believe that carbon capture and DAC, in particular, will be instrumental in shaping the future energy landscape,” Hollub said.

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