UH — along with some industry partners — has announced plans to work on applications for the industrial metaverse. Image via Getty Images

The University of Houston is helping advance the industrial metaverse.

UH has teamed up with the AI Innovation Consortium, software company Nvidia, and oil and gas engineering and services company TechnipFMC to create applications for the industrial metaverse. The project is affiliated with the Artificial Intelligence Industry Incubator and Digital Oilfield Lab at UH’s campus in Sugar Land. The incubator and lab opened in 2020.

As VentureBeat defines it, the industrial metaverse can transform the way every physical asset — such as a building, plane, robot, or car — is created, assembled, and operated. The industrial metaverse marries the “real world” with technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, cloud computing, edge computing, the internet of things (IoT), 5G, and extended reality (virtual, augmented, and mixed reality).

Global revenue for the industrial metaverse is projected to reach $540 billion by 2025. A key fixture of the industrial metaverse are “digital twins,” which are virtual replicas of physical entities or systems (such as factories).

Adam Berg, manager of learning solutions at TechnipFMC, has been working with the UH College of Technology and the AI Innovation Consortium to test an augmented reality program for management of upstream resources. TechnipFMC is a pioneer in extended reality.

One of the UH professors participating in this effort is David Crawley, professor of practice at the university’s College of Technology and a trustee of the AI Innovation Consortium. Last year, the consortium hosted an AI conference at the UH campus in Sugar Land. The consortium is a think tank whose members include UH, Pennsylvania State University, Louisiana State University, and the University of Louisville (Kentucky).

Crawley says the consortium’s “academic ecosystem” is critical to developing the workforce of the future.

Konrad Konarski, chairman of the consortium, says the group is building the world’s largest portfolio of industrial metaverse apps for the oilfield services industry and various manufacturing sectors.

“This means a maintenance manager, an operations technology expert, or whoever is responsible for a metaverse technology project will be able to pick up an augmented reality platform or a wearable computer, or simply a smartphone, and seamlessly interconnect their real-world operating environment to and from the metaverse,” Konarski, an AI and IoT expert, says in a news release.

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Rice University MBA programs crack top 5 rankings again in annual report

top of class

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).