This week's Houston innovators to know includes Sola Lawal of Nuro, Jose Diaz-Gomez of CHI St. Luke's Health, and Kimberly Baker of UT School of Public Health. Courtesy photos

Editor's note: A key attribute of innovators and inventors is the ability to look forward — to see the need for their innovation and the difference it will make. Each of this week's innovators to know have that skill, whether it's predicting the rise of autonomous vehicles or seeing the future of health care.

Sola Lawal, product operations manager at Nuro

Autonomous vehicle delivery service is driving access to food in Houston’s vulnerable communities

Native Houstonian Sola Lawal is looking into how AI and robotics can help increase access to fresh foods in local food deserts. Photo courtesy of Nuro

Sola Lawal has always found himself back in his hometown of Houston. Now working for artificial intelligence and robotics company, Nuro, he sees the potential Houston has to become a major market for autonomous vehicles.

"I think that autonomous vehicles are going to become an industry in the same way your standard vehicles are," Lawal says."One really strong way the Houston ecosystem and Nuro can partner is essentially building out the ancillary."

Lawal shared more on how Houston and Nuro can work together on this week's episode of the Houston innovators podcast. Read more and stream the episode.

Jose Diaz-Gomez, an anesthesiologist at CHI St. Luke's Health

CHI St. Luke's Health has invested in around 40 of the Butterfly iQ devices that can be used to provide accurate and portable ultrasonography on COVID-19 patients. Photo courtesy of CHI St. Luke's

A new, portable ultrasound device has equipped Jose Diaz-Gomez and his team with a reliable, easy-to-use tool for diagnostics and tracking progress of COVID-19 patients. And this tool will continue to help Diaz-Gomez lead his team of physicians.

"Whatever we will face after the pandemic, many physicians will be able to predict more objectively when a patient is deteriorating from acute respiratory failure," he says. "Without this innovation, we wouldn't have been able to be at higher standards with ultrasonography." Read more.

Kimberly A. Baker, assistant professor at UTHealth School of Public Health

UTHealth School of Public Health launched its Own Every Piece campaign to promote women's health access and education. Photo courtesy of Own Every Piece

It was unnerving to Kimberly Baker that proper sex education wasn't in the curriculum of Texas schools, and women were left without resources for contraceptives. So, along with UTHealth School of Public Health, she launched its Own Every Piece campaign as a way to empower women with information on birth control and ensure access to contraceptive care regardless of age, race, relationship status or socioeconomic status.

"You feel like the campaign is talking to you as a friend, not talking down to you as an authority or in any type of shaming way," says Kimberly A. Baker, assistant professor at UTHealth School of Public Health. One of her favorite areas of the website is the "Find a Clinic" page, connecting teens and adult women to nearby clinics, because "one of the biggest complaints from women is that they didn't know where to go," says Baker. Continue reading.

UTHealth School of Public Health launched its Own Every Piece campaign to promote women's health access and education. Photo courtesy of Own Every Piece

This Houston organization is rethinking access to and education on women's health

women's health

If you browse through the required school curriculum in Texas, you might be surprised to find that sex ed doesn't quite make the cut. Sex education is optional in the Lone Star State and state law requires schools to stress abstinence when choosing to teach the subject, which can make understanding birth control even more confusing for both teens and adult women.

UTHealth School of Public Health launched its Own Every Piece campaign as a way to empower women with information on birth control and ensure access to contraceptive care regardless of age, race, relationship status or socioeconomic status. One click to the Own Every Piece website and you'll be greeted by the smiles of diverse women, along with videos of their birth control journey and educational information on various birth control options.

"You feel like the campaign is talking to you as a friend, not talking down to you as an authority or in any type of shaming way," says Kimberly A. Baker, assistant professor at UTHealth School of Public Health. One of her favorite areas of the website is the "Find a Clinic" page, connecting teens and adult women to nearby clinics, because "one of the biggest complaints from women is that they didn't know where to go," says Baker.

The website and social media platforms preach of body-positivity, empowerment, and knowledge. Prompts from a "true or false"-style quiz debunk myths from birth control weight gain to proper condom use on the home page. In the name of inclusivity, women can even upload their own birth control story to share with Own Every Piece's audience.

Baker and her team got their start in school districts developing programs for middle and high schoolers while also training teachers on how to discuss birth control openly. After working in over 20 school districts with the goal of preventing teen pregnancy through education, Baker identified a new problem: the significant lack of access to health care within the Houston community.

"We wanted to figure out what the major gaps were," Baker says. "What we found, of course, was how expensive birth control was — especially with some of the most effective methods."

Kimberly A. Baker is assistant professor at UTHealth School of Public Health. Photo courtesy of Own Every Piece

Let's crunch some numbers. When interpreting the price of contraceptives, the type of birth control and access to health care can impact how much women pay out-of-pocket. According to Baker, the standard pill can cost anywhere from $10 to $30 a month while implanting long-acting reversible contraceptives like the IUD can cost upwards of $600 to $700. These calculations don't factor in the cost of a doctor's appointment, the removal of a device like the IUD, or even the average $4,500 it costs to give birth if you choose to have a child in the U.S.

After noticing gaps in who could pay for service, Baker and her team realized that some community centers didn't have the funds to have long-acting contraceptive on hand.

"We knew if we partnered with health clinics and health centers to help train them to better serve folks that they weren't serving well, and to give them more funds to buy methods that women couldn't probably afford...we would be filling that gap," she says.

Creating comfort and trust among women looking for contraceptives was another key intention in the campaign's launch.

"When [women] enter a community health clinic, they should feel confident to ask questions and to know that they're receiving all the accurate information they should be getting so they can make the best decision for them," says Baker.

Baker likes to think of the Own Every Piece project as a "more celebratory campaign around birth control that we hadn't seen before," she says. "There are so many stereotypes around sexuality and reproduction that are very shame-based," says Baker, particularly for "Latinx and Black women."

She acknowledges how epithetical birth control messaging that suggests women shouldn't "have more kids" or implies "pregnancy is a bad thing" frames reproductive health in a negative way. "We wanted a campaign that let women know that they own their body. They make decisions about their body, and birth control is a piece of that," she says.

The purpose of providing access took on a new meaning when the coronavirus hit. Since Own Every Piece began as a digital campaign targeted to Houston women ages 18 to 30, the initiative had a head start in the race to move online.

"We saw an opportunity to figure out how we can tell our community health centers to get into the telecontraception space because we've already established trust virtually through our campaign," explains Baker.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Texas held the title of the state with the most uninsured residents in the U.S. In a state with 2.9 million unemployment claims since March, access to affordable birth control has never been more essential for women.

"From women who lost their insurance due to losing their job because of COVID-19, this has been a godsend," says Baker.

Telemedicine has also added convenience for women who didn't have the time to check out a clinic in-person before the pandemic.

While COVID-19's strains on American health care continue to dominate headlines, birth control has also managed to make national news. On July 8, the Supreme Court ruled that employers can opt-out of birth control coverage—a decision that could result in an estimated 126,000 women losing contraceptive coverage from their employers, according to the New York Times.

The 7-to-2 Supreme Court decision is the latest in a seven-year-long litigation over religious objections to birth control. Outside of pregnancy prevention, birth control helps women cope with premenstrual dysmorphic disorder, polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis, acne, and a number of other issues.

"We have to work harder to have inclusive messaging around [birth control usage], because birth control isn't just about pregnancy prevention," explains Baker. "People use birth control for a number of needs. When you message it just around pregnancy prevention, people start to feel like something is wrong with being pregnant, and that's not what we set out to do."

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Rice University MBA programs rank among top 5 in prestigious annual report

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Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business MBA programs have been ranked among the top five in the country again in The Princeton Review’s 2025 Best Business Schools rankings.

The university's MBA program in finance earned a No. 3 ranking, climbing up two spots from its 2024 ranking. Finance MBA programs at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business and New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business were the only ones to outrank Rice, claiming No. 2 and No. 1 spots, respectively.

Rice's online MBA program was ranked No. 5, compared to No. 4 last year. Indiana University's Bloomington Kelley School of Business' online program claimed the top spot.

“These rankings reflect the commitment of our faculty and staff, the drive and talent of our students and the strong support of our alumni and partners,” Peter Rodriguez, dean of Rice Business, said in a news release. “They are exceptional honors but also reminders — not just of our top-tier programs and world-class faculty and students but of our broader impact on the future of business education.”

Rice also ranked at No. 6 for “greatest resources for minority students."

The Princeton Review’s 2025 business school rankings are based on data from surveys of administrators at 244 business schools as well as surveys of 22,800 students enrolled in the schools’ MBA programs during the previous three academic years.

"The schools that made our lists for 2025 share four characteristics that inform our criteria for designating them as 'best': excellent academics, robust experiential learning components, outstanding career services, and positive feedback about them from enrolled students we surveyed," Rob Franek, The Princeton Review's editor-in-chief, said in a press release. "No b-school is best overall or best for all students, but to all students considering earning an MBA, we highly recommend these b-schools and salute them for their impressive programs."

Rice's finance program has ranked in the top 10 for eight consecutive years, and its online MBA has ranked in the top five for four years.

Rice and the University of Houston also claimed top marks on the Princeton Review's entrepreneurship rankings. Rice ranks as No. 1 on the Top 50 Entrepreneurship: Grad list, and the University of Houston ranked No. 1 on Top 50 Entrepreneurship: Ugrad. Read more here.

Houston named ‘star’ metro for artificial intelligence in new report

eyes on AI

A new report declares Houston one of the country’s 28 “star” hubs for artificial intelligence.

The Houston metro area appears at No. 16 in the Brookings Institution’s ranking of metros that are AI “stars.” The metro areas earned star status based on data from three AI buckets: talent, innovation and adoption. Only two places, the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley, made Brookings’ “superstar” list.

According to Brookings, the Houston area had 11,369 job postings in 2024 that sought candidates with AI skills, 210 AI startups (based on Crunchbase data from 2014 to 2024), and 113 venture capital deals for AI startups (based on PitchBook data from 2023 to 2024).

A number of developments are boosting Houston’s AI profile, such as:

Brookings also named Texas’s three other major metros as AI stars:

  • No. 11 Austin
  • No. 13 Dallas-Fort Worth
  • No. 40 San Antonio

Brookings said star metros like Houston “are bridging the gap” between the two superstar regions and the rest of the country. In 2025, the 28 star metros made up 46 percent of the country’s metro-area employment but 54 percent of AI job postings. Across the 28 metros, the number of AI job postings soared 139 percent between 2018 and 2025, according to Brookings.

Around the country, dozens of metros fell into three other categories on Brookings’ AI list: “emerging centers” (14 metros), “focused movers” (29 metros) and “nascent adopters” (79 metros).