3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Vibhu Sharma of InnoVent Renewables, Ashley DeWalt of DivInc, and Josh Teekell of SmartAC.com. Photos courtesy

Editor's note: Every week, I introduce you to a handful of Houston innovators to know recently making headlines with news of innovative technology, investment activity, and more. This week's batch includes three innovators across sports tech, clean energy, and more.

Vibhu Sharma, founder and CEO of InnoVent Renewables

Vibhu Sharma of InnoVent Renewables joins the Houston Innovators Podcast. Photo via LinkedIn

Vibhu Sharma observed a huge sustainability problem within the automotive industry, and he was tired of no one doing anything about it.

"Globally, humans dispose 1 billion tires every year," Sharma says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "It's a massive environmental and public health problem because these tires can take hundreds of years to break down, and what they start doing is leaking chemicals into the soil."

Today, 98 percent of all tires end up in landfills, Sharma says, and this waste contributes to a multitude of problems — from mosquito and pest infestation to chemical leaks and fire hazards. That's why he founded InnoVent Renewables, a Houston-based company that uses its proprietary continuous pyrolysis technology to convert waste tires into valuable fuels, steel, and chemicals. Continue reading.

Ashley DeWalt, managing director of DivInc

Ashley DeWalt shares news of DivInc's newest partnership. Photo courtesy of DivInc

DivInc, a Texas-based accelerator focused on uplifting people of color and women founders, is collaborating with the NBA Foundation to provide Black Houston youth with paid internships at tech startups.

Leveraging its expansive portfolio of startups, DivInc will pair 25 Houston-based undergraduate and graduate students (ages 18 to 24) with tech companies the nonprofit has mentored. The 10-week internship program will provide students with professional development workshops and firsthand entrepreneurial experiences. The program also ensures a symbiotic relationship as the startups’ founders gain access to an expanded talent pool and further development opportunities via DivInc.

"We are thrilled to partner with the NBA Foundation to bring this transformative opportunity to life," says Ashley DeWalt, managing director of DivInc. "Together, we are bridging the gap between talent and opportunity, creating meaningful experiences that empower Black youth to lead in their communities and beyond." Continue reading.

​Josh Teekell, founder and CEO of SmartAC.com

\u200bJosh Teekell, founder and CEO of SmartAC.com

Josh Teekell shares news of SmartAC's latest funding. Photo courtesy

Houston-based SmartAC.com, which provides a customer loyalty management platform for contractors, has raised a follow-on round from Mercury Fund and other investors. The dollar amount of the round wasn’t disclosed.

An October filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicates SmartAC.com planned to raise $8.2 million in venture capital. Of that sum, about $4 million had already been raised, the company reported, and nearly $4.2 million remained to be raised.

“Growing a business in the trades is all about customer loyalty, and loyalty is driven by optimizing the customer’s experience,” Josh Teekell, founder and CEO of SmartAC.com, says in a news release. Continue reading.

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Nicolaus Radford of Nauticus Robotics, Josh Teekell of SmartAC.com, and Zhifeng Ren of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH. Photos courtesy

3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to three local innovators across industries — from robotics to superconductivity — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Nicolaus Radford, founder and CEO of Nauticus Robotics

Houston-based Nauticus Robotics founder, Nicolaus Radford, shares the latest from his company and why we're primed for a hardtech movement. Image via LinkedIn

It's been a busy past year or so for Nicolaus Radford, founder and CEO of Nauticus Robotics. He's taken his company public at a difficult time for the market, launched new partnerships with the United States Marine Corps, and even welcomed a new family member.

Originally founded in 2014 as Houston Mechatronics, Nauticus Robotics has designed a fleet of underwater robots and a software platform for autonomous operations. Radford caught up with InnovationMap about these recent milestones for him and the company in an interview.

"I look back on it and it's, you know, ringing the Nasdaq bell when we listed, and giving that speech at the podium — it was a surreal moment," he tells InnovationMap. "I was excited but cautious at the same time. I mean, the life of a CEO of a public company at large, it's all about the process following a process, the regulations, the administration of the public company, the filings, the reportings — it can feel daunting. I have to rise to the occasion to tackle that in this the next stage of the company." Read more.

​Josh Teekell, founder and CEO of SmartAC.com

Josh Teekell joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss the latest from his company, which just closed its series B. Photo courtesy

A Houston startup that combines unique sensor technology with software analysis has raised its next round of funding to — according to Founder and CEO Josh Teekell — turbocharge its sales.

SmartAC.com's sensors can monitor all aspects of air conditioning units and report back any issues, meaning homeowners have quicker and less costly repairs. Teekell says he's focused on sales, and he's going to do that with the $22 million raised in the series B round that closed this month. He says the company will also grow its team that goes out to deploy the technology and train the contractors on the platform.

"This funding really buys us a couple years of runway through the end of next year and allows us to focus on getting to cash flow breakeven, which is right around our wheelhouse of our abilities here in the next 12 months," Teekell says. "In general, we've accomplished everything we'd be able to accomplish on the hardware side, and now it's just about deployment." Read more.

Zhifeng Ren, director of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH

A team of researchers out of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston has discovered a faster way of transportation. Photo via UH.edu

Researchers at the University of Houston and in Germany released a proof-of-concept paper this month that uncovers a new, fuel efficient means of transportation that they say could one day make air travel and traditional freight transport obsolete.

"I call it a world-changing technology,” Zhifeng Ren, director of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH and author of the paper, said in a statement.

Published in the journal APL Energy, the paper demonstrates a new way of using superconductors to move vehicles along existing highways while transporting liquified hydrogen at the same time. Until now, the costs of using superconductivity for transportation has held back innovation in the field. This model also reduces the need for a separate specialized pipeline system to transport liquified hydrogen that's able to keep the fuel source at minus 424 degrees Fahrenheit. Read more.

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Q&A: TIME100 AI honoree Angle Bush on building Houston’s artificial intelligence future

AI builder

Angle Bush, founder and CEO of Black Women in Artificial Intelligence, has a running question for her organization's members: Are you in the lab?

For Bush, inquiry isn’t philosophical. Learning about artificial intelligence is one thing. But building with it? Developing products, solving problems and creating a stake in the emerging AI economy? That’s another thing entirely—and exactly the point.

Bush’s own path into AI began in 2019 with an unlikely project: a robot named Usher, designed to bring her hot cocoa. She went down what she calls “YouTube University” to figure out how to build it and kept encountering another subject: artificial intelligence. Her curiosity eventually led her to a Houston AI event, where she noticed something missing.

She didn’t see a full reflection of herself, prompting a bigger question: If AI was becoming a transformative force, who would have a role in shaping it? Her answer became the premise for what came next: There couldn’t be an AI revolution without Black women.

Bush never finished Usher. Instead, she built Black Women in Artificial Intelligence, which has grown into a global organization with members across five continents.

Six years after launching BWIAI, the Houston founder was named to the 2026 TIME100 AI, TIME’s annual list recognizing 100 of the world’s most influential people in artificial intelligence.

The recognition is significant, but Bush is focused on what comes next: moving people beyond AI literacy and adoption and into creation—turning ideas into deployed products, building economic opportunity and ensuring more people have a hand in shaping the technology.

That mission brings Bush back to Houston, where she sees an opportunity to build on the city’s entrepreneurial culture while advancing conversations around responsible and ethical AI.

InnovationMap spoke with Bush about her TIME100 AI recognition, her push to get more people building with AI, Houston’s role in the technology’s future and her simple message: Get in the lab.

InnovationMap: What accomplishment at BWIAI are you most proud of?

Angle Bush: This past March, 11 of our members designed and deployed products and services utilizing artificial intelligence. For me, that's what we want to do. We're looking for builders. I continually ask our members: Are you in the lab? What are you building?

We have members here in Houston who built a conference app designed to help people better understand and navigate the conference experience. We also have Shonda and Shalisha Witherspoon, The Digital Twins, who created a patent assistant to help individuals interested in creating a patent for their product or service.

For me, watching those women move dreams from notebooks to deployment is more important than anything else. Notebooks are designed to hold your dreams, but not keep your dreams.

For NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference, if you wanted to participate as part of the Black Women in AI delegation, you had to build something. You couldn't just give me a concept and say, “Hey, Angle, I'm building ABC.” No. I needed you to design it, build it and deploy it. That will continually be one of the things I'm most proud of.

IM: Why is building so important to you?

AB: I've been saying that from the beginning because I tell people all the time: I can talk all day. We can have this conversation all day. But at the end of the day, are we building? What is the result?

Conversation is great. It can provide insight. But we have to put our hands on products. We have to put our hands on the APIs. We have to put our hands on that knowledge and ask, What do we do with it?

After you learn it, what are you doing with it? Are you going to create an app that helps your family? Are you creating an app that allows you to be part of the AI economy in a way that you can control? We're all going to be part of the AI economy at some point based on our careers and everything else. But what part of it can you control?

IM: What's next for Black Women in Artificial Intelligence?

AB: I want to continue our mission to educate, engage, embrace and empower Black women in AI. I want our organization to serve as an opportunity for women to build. How do we build? How do we understand how to build? How do we move beyond how we've been conditioned and start asking questions—not only of ourselves, but also the right questions of corporations?

Long term, I want us to continue building, and then I want us to pass that knowledge and insight down to the next generation. But I also want us to reach back to generations that may not have had this opportunity when they were younger. Maybe they were discouraged from going into STEM when they were younger. I want them to know that you can still build. It doesn't matter what your age is. It doesn't matter what college or university you attended. If you have an idea, we want to democratize AI so that you can build.

IM: BWIAI's story began in Houston. What role do you think Houston can play in the AI boom?

AB: First, I absolutely love Houston. I'm originally from Chicago and was raised in Saginaw, Michigan. But as they say, I got to Houston as quickly as I could. I think Houston has a great opportunity to position itself as a center of excellence for innovation. We have an entrepreneurial spirit and drive that I believe is unmatched.

And as much as we have entrepreneurs, we also have advocates who want to see the ethical use of AI. I think we'll see a rise in entrepreneurship. Houston is already building that ecosystem with the Ion and other entities coming into the fold.

As far as the mark Black Women in Artificial Intelligence will make in Houston, I think we'll bring a different perspective to the city's AI ecosystem. We'll make an impact on the entrepreneurial side, but also on the advocacy side when it comes to the responsible and ethical use of AI, which isn't always talked about.

IM: One of the biggest concerns surrounding AI is its potential to displace workers faster than people can acquire new skills. How should we be thinking about that?

AB: In full transparency, that's a tough question to answer because AI is moving so quickly. There are so many different models and so many different things happening that it can appear as though they're coming out of thin air.

For me, it's a matter of how we work with individuals so they can think more about the system than the model, because the models can retire. The impact this is going to have on communities globally is going to be an interesting dynamic. With the work we're doing at Black Women in Artificial Intelligence, this is our mitigation system: How can we bring individuals along so they can learn artificial intelligence and understand that there is a pivot—and it's not coming. It's happening right now, live.

How can we create an ecosystem where individuals get the training, support and understanding they need? For me, that's how we mitigate it: by creating a space where individuals can learn how to pivot.

IM: If readers take one thing away from this conversation, what do you want it to be?

AB: How important it is to be in the lab. It is important to start building today—not tomorrow, not next week, not next month. We have to be in the lab today. That's it.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

UTMB launches new department for space medicine, names inaugural leader

department launch

In space, no one can hear you scream—but they can hear you discuss your medical history and recent symptoms.

The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) announced last month that it would form a new Department of Aerospace and Exploration Medicine within its School of Public and Population Health under the leadership of Dr. Ronak V. Shah, who will serve as inaugural chair.

“Human exploration is changing rapidly, and the health challenges associated with distance, isolation, and limited resources are changing along with it,” Shah said in a news release. “Creating the Department of Aerospace and Exploration Medicine gives us an opportunity to build on decades of expertise at UTMB as we prepare for the future.”

The new department elevates UTMB’s existing Aerospace Medicine Division and provides "broader academic structure for expanding research, education, and collaboration across disciplines," according to the release. Shah was previously named director of the division in 2022 after serving as medical director of Johnson Space Center.

Space exploration in particular has a wide variety of highly specific medical side effects that are in need of the formalized study that the department will specialize in. For example, zero- and low-gravity environments cause everything from detached fingernails to flattened eyeballs. Even in modern, high-tech spacecraft, the human body feels the impacts of space.

It’s an area of medicine UTMB is uniquely suited for. Starting in the 1950s with NASA’s director of medical research Dr. Charles A. Berry, UTMB partnered with the blossoming era of exploration by monitoring astronauts. In 1993, UTMB and the NASA Johnson Space Center created the joint Aerospace Medicine Residency Program, which used bed facilities at the Galveston branch to simulate weightlessness. Wherever there has been a question about how flight and space affect health, odds are UTMB has been involved.

The Department of Aerospace and Exploration Medicine will launch several new initiatives soon. One planned for 2027 is an Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Fellowship that will allow scientists to study the physiology of high-pressure flight.

“In the era of a growing global space economy, we are revisiting questions such as who is flying, what is their destination, what vehicle will get them there?” Shah added in the release. “The answers to these questions will drive what research is needed and how we train the next generation.”

Energy AI company opens first U.S. office at Houston's the Ion

new to hou

Building on its partnership with Houston-based oilfield services provider Halliburton, energy-sector AI company Shape Digital recently opened an office at The Ion. It’s the company’s first U.S. location.

Shape Digital’s workforce in Houston includes employees specializing in tech support, business development and client services. The company’s local hiring projections and headcount weren’t available. The new office will be located within Industrious at the Ion, according to Rice Alliance.

A key driver of the new Houston office: The company forecasts North America will account for more than 20 percent of its business in 2027.

“North America is a critical market for industrial innovation, and Houston sits at the center of companies driving that progress,” Caio Sene, vice president of client services at Shape Digital, said in a release. “Growing our presence here allows us to work alongside operators as they look for practical ways to turn existing operational data into clear recommendations for what to do next.”

Shape Digital, which also has offices in Singapore and Brazil, develops decision-making platforms for the oil and gas sector.

The Ion District office gives Shape Digital a presence close to Halliburton’s headquarters. In May, the two companies forged a partnership to combine Halliburton’s Digital Field Solverdecision-making system with Shape Digital’s AI portfolio.

Shape Digital layers AI software atop existing operations data rather than replacing legacy systems or adding new software.

The company’s suite of AI agents draws on more than 200 operations-monitoring algorithms, continually learning from company and industry data. The suite comprises four products: Shape Aura, Shape Lighthouse, Shape Lumen and Shape Reef.

Shape Digital says that by working with a customer’s existing operations data, it can deliver ROI in less than two months without any additional investment in equipment or infrastructure.

The company is a 2021 spinoff of Japan-based Modec. Modec builds, owns, and operates floating offshore oil and gas production facilities. Its Modec America subsidiary is based in Houston.

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