Autonomous cab company launches Houston pilot program for wheelchair-accessible rides

new to hou

Cruise has partnered with a mobility solutions provider to launch a six-month pilot program offering free wheelchair-accessible transportation in Houston. Photo courtesy of Cruise

A California company with autonomous cabs has announced a new pilot program in partnership with a provider of wheelchairs and mobility solutions.

Cruise has teamed up with Numotion for a six-month wheelchair-accessible vehicle (WAV) pilot program in Houston, offering free transportation for qualifying Numotion customers, according to the companies. The program will operate in over 90 Houston-area ZIP codes.

“Numotion is excited to partner with Cruise to offer a seamless and convenient solution for wheelchair users in the Houston area. By providing transportation to and from repair appointments, we're alleviating a significant stressor and providing a way for our customers to receive their service and repair faster,” says Mike Swinford, CEO of Numotion, in a news release. “We're constantly striving to innovate and improve the lives of our customers, and this collaboration demonstrates our ongoing commitment to providing beneficial customer experiences."

Cruise entered the Texas market last year, with Houston services launching in October 2023 before the company put all operations on pause following a California crash. This is the first Texas announcement for Cruise since the pause.

"Accessibility is core to our mission at Cruise. This pilot program with Numotion is doing more than providing accessible rides – it’s about empowering people in the community with greater mobility and independence, while also building learnings to better our service in the future," says Craig Glidden, president and chief administrative officer at Cruise about the new pilot.

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PUSH Birth Partners will also soon host several support groups for pregnant people focused on improving mental health. Photo courtesy of Jacqueline McLeeland

Innovative Houston nonprofit partners with county organization to provide maternal health services

TEAM WORK

PUSH Birth Partners, a Houston-based maternal health nonprofit, is teaming up with the Harris County Public Health Department to provide doula services for over 200 pregnant people free of cost.

Jacqueline McLeeland, CEO and founder of PUSH, says the program will begin in August and aims to improve maternal health and birth outcomes for vulnerable populations. McLeeland says the organization has built up a strong doula training program through their collective in partnership with March of Dimes and several local doula organizations.

McLeeland says PUSH aims to address poor maternal health outcomes for women of color in part by training more doulas of color who can help reduce racial disparities in care. A 2021 study by Harris County Public Health found Precinct 1, which is predominantly composed of people of color, had the highest maternal mortality rate of the county.

Through their collective, PUSH has trained two cohorts of doulas through an integrated care model, focused on providing collaborative care with medical providers in the healthcare system.

“Our programs are designed to advance health equity, we see the numbers, we see that women of color, specifically Black women in that group are disproportionately impacted,” McLeeland tells InnovationMap.

After receiving a $100,000 grant from the Episcopal Health Foundation in 2023, PUSH began their doula expansion program in Houston and they have since received an additional grant from EHF for the next fiscal year. McLeeland shares PUSH has also launched a pilot program called Blossoming Beyond Birth, sponsored by the Rockwell Fund, targeted towards improving maternal mental health through weekly support groups in Houston.

“It’s very exciting to know that we have come this far from where we started and to see how everything is coming together,” McLeeland shares.

Jacqueline McLeeland serves as chief executive and founder of non-profit PUSH Birth Partners who has trained and collaborated with a network of doulas for the partnership. Photo courtesy of Jacqueline McLeeland

For McLeeland, improving maternal health outcomes and providing support to people experiencing high-risk pregnancies are deeply personal goals. McLeeland has sickle cell anemia, a condition that can cause serious complications during pregnancy. During her first pregnancy in 2015, McLeeland was placed on bed rest two months before her due date at which point she had been working in clinical research within the pharmaceutical industry for over 12 years.

“People don’t realize the magnitude of what women go through, during pregnancy and after,” McLeeland says. “There’s a lot of emotional, psychological, and physical tolls depending on how the pregnancy and delivery went.”

After giving birth to her first child, McLeeland took maternity leave, during which she began to research maternal morbidity and mortality trends, information which she says was not widely discussed at the time.

McLeeland says entering the maternal healthcare field felt like a necessity following her second pregnancy. Several months after giving birth to her second child, McLeeland says she received a bill for a surgical procedure that was performed during her cesarean section without her or her husband’s consent. McLeeland says that was the first time she was made aware of the surgery.

“The procedure that was claimed to have been performed could have put my life in jeopardy by hemorrhaging based off of additional research I did once, I came across that information,” McLeeland explains. “These are some of the things that happen in the healthcare system that make people skeptical of trusting in the healthcare system, trusting in doctors.”

McLeeland says the key to improving maternal and birth outcomes for vulnerable populations is to encourage the partnership between doulas, community healthcare workers, and physicians and hopes to further this collaboration through future programming.

The funding will go toward created a summer program called the University of Houston Cardiovascular Undergraduate Research Experience, or UH-CURE. Photo via UH.edu

University of Houston receives funding to support diverse cardiovascular researchers

pumping up innovation

University of Houston professors have received a nearly $800,000 grant to create a new summer program that will support diverse future researchers.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute provided $792,900 in grant funding to Bradley McConnell, professor of pharmacology at the UH College of Pharmacy, and Tho Tran, research assistant professor of chemistry at the UH College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

The funding will go toward created a summer program called the University of Houston Cardiovascular Undergraduate Research Experience, or UH-CURE. Ten undergraduate students per year will be selected for five years in cardiovascular research across disciplinary lines.

"We are so grateful to be able to provide talented students across the U.S. an opportunity to experience our excellent cardiovascular research environment,” Tran says in a news release. “We want UH-CURE participants to gain confidence in their research abilities through our hands-on approach and the skillset to navigate future challenges through our professional training.”

The goal is to increase students’ interest in cardiovascular research, and students have the opportunity to receive a $6,000 stipend, travel to a globally recognized cardiovascular research conference, and take part in on-campus housing and a food allowance. The summer program will also try to develop research skills, increase awareness of transdisciplinary research, promote diversity and collaborations, cultivate transferable skills necessary for succeeding in graduate school and help facilitate undergraduate students to pursue further training in cardiovascular research.

The program will integrate students into a research lab where they will learn research skills, data analysis, and research integrity. The program will be under the mentorship of a faculty member from across UH’s colleges, and include workshop and enrichment activities.

McConnell and Tran previously formed the American Heart Association-funded UH-HEART pilot program, which focused on cardiovascular research. They expanded on that initiative with UH-CURE, which includes cardiovascular research across disciplinary lines from community engagement and population-based research to basic, translational, and applied research. UH-CURE also helps prepare for careers in cardiovascular research.

“We all know that a diverse environment leads to a much better generation of ideas and solutions,” Tran adds. “We hope to bring that strength to the future of cardiovascular research through our students.”

Tho Tran (left) and Bradley McConnell are professors at UH. Photo via UH.edu

Redemption Square in Generation Park will feature high-tech parking solution pilot program. Photo via generationpark.com

Houston developer to roll out innovative pilot to improve parking at major development

testing tech

Houston real estate company McCord Development will roll out an innovative 12-week pilot to learn how to make parking smarter at its master planned development Generation Park in Northeast Houston.

In partnership with Milwaukee-based CivicSmart Inc., a leader in Smart City parking, the company will test a new Internet-of-Things-based parking solution at Generation Park's mixed-use lifestyle center, Redemption Square. The program is only the second of its kind in the U.S., according to McCord.

McCord will install 30 of CivicSmart's solar powered bollards at Redemption Square that track real-time parking occupancy data through LTE license-plate-reading cameras. The data will be analyzed to help McCord optimize traffic and develop better strategies and parking rates.

"We are thrilled to introduce one of the first parking pilot programs in the country,” Ashwin Chandran, Director of Technology Innovation at McCord, said in a statement. “At McCord, we strive to measure and understand behavior in order to enhance the human experience and make efficient business decisions. We hope to use this data to improve the overall performance of our operations across all our assets.”

According to the statement, the intention of the program is to help keep curbside spots available for short-term guests.

From the customer perspective, parkers will pay via text or QR code, where they will enter their license plate number and payment information, which will be stored for subsequent visits.

The bollards can also dispatch up-to-the-minute pricing details to parkers, and can be controlled remotely by the developer to close certain parking spots for special events.

In addition to the 30 bollards, Redemption Square will still also offer free parking in its nearby garage, and other parking options on Redemption Square Road and metered spaces on Assay Street, according to the statement.

Last week, McCord also announced plans to create a 45-acre biomanufacturing campus within the 4,300-acre Generation Park development. Known as BioHub Two, the center will include 500,000 square feet for manufacturing, lab, and office space. It's slated to join San Jacinto College’s Biotech Training Center in the development, which was announced last December.

Other plans for Generation Park include two multifamily complexes, a mixed-use development called The Commons, and retail and green spaces.

McCord will install 30 of CivicSmart's solar powered bollards at Redemption Square that track real-time parking occupancy data through LTE license-plate-reading cameras. Photo courtesy of Generation Park

A Houston pilot program created a way to design stylish homes at a fraction of the cost — and in less than half the time. Photo courtesy of BoxPrefab

Houston-grown partnership completes innovative pilot program promoting affordable housing

innovating an impact

For families who want to live near downtown, Houston's affordable housing deficit in and around the Inner Loop is no secret.

For thirty years and counting, Houston-based nonprofit Avenue has confronted this reality by creating affordable housing opportunities and comprehensive community development programs for families in Houston neighborhoods.

"One of our chief objectives is to help stabilize neighborhoods and give opportunities for people to stay in the neighborhoods by providing moderately-priced homes," says Robert Fiederlein, Avenue's senior director of real estate development.

After an audit of Houston's Northline neighborhood revealed the community's affordable housing shortage, the Avenue team began to explore various methods to deliver new construction to the community, through sustainable housing at affordable prices. Research of diverse construction methods led Avenue to the innovative solution of prefabricated family dwellings.

In their effort to find a smart, sustainable alternative to traditional construction, Avenue came across BoxPrefab, an innovative off-site construction company that produces precision-built prefabricated homes from design to completion.

BoxPrefab's sustainable-oriented attributes and efficient processes checked all of Avenue's 'must-have' boxes and the two entities kicked off their partnership with their premier pilot program for modular home development.

"We care a lot about bringing affordability to housing and bringing good designs to affordable housing. We were really excited to work with Avenue because we are really in tune with their mission," says Rame Hruska, BoxPrefab's co-founder. "This is a great solution for homeowners."

This housing solution is not your run-of-the-mill "affordable housing." Besides its sleek finishes and modern look, BoxPrefab's modular home design and construction process is practical and ultra-simplified. Using prefabricated components, the company specializes in building homes in a factory, a controlled environment, instead of building on-site, where the construction process is subject to external variables, like rain, inclement weather, or any labor diversions.

The BoxPrefab houses are created offsite and then set up on the property. Photo courtesy of BoxPrefab

"Reliability is a big factor for our clients. There's so many unknowns and variables, from weather to other various delays, so we can really give people a much more definitive price, time and set quality," says Hruska.

After producing the factory-built components, BoxPrefab then assembles the prefabricated modules on the home's lot. With this streamlined process, BoxPrefab is able to build homes faster and in a more systematic manner, all while reducing waste output and overall cost.

"We have confidence that if we placed higher orders, costs would go down," Fiederlein says. "This could be a way to build less costly affordable housing. Construction costs came out $130 per square foot, which is comparable to the other site-built homes that we're working on right now.

"Another thing we've learned was that we can do it in half the time as a site build," Fiederlein continues. "It takes six to seven months to build a site-built home and we completed this home in just over three months. Russell, with tighter scheduling, said he could've built quicker. We can half the time it would normally take. As you know, time is money."

BoxPrefab's construction process, fiscal efficiency and waste output reduction is exactly what Avenue was looking for in a partner. Together, the two entities successfully completed their pilot program by placing a three-bedroom-two-bathroom prefabricated home on the market in Houston's Northline neighborhood.

"We're really excited about this potential and see it as becoming a much more standard way to build," Hruska says.

Prefabricated building options are considered the future of construction, due to its increased reliability and quality in the construction process, Hruska says. Based on the success of their pilot program, Avenue anticipates investing in more modular housing in the future. BoxPrefab, while Houston-based and focused, has their sights set on expanding regionally, to service more clients with prefabricated solutions, says Russell Hruska, BoxPrefab co-founder.

"Modular is a viable path going forward," Fiederlein says. "It's going to take additional work to get there, but the pilot shows that it's certainly a method that helps to reduce costs…We're confident that it can be the way of delivering affordable housing at lower prices."

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Houston residents rank economy as biggest problem, new Kinder survey shows

by the numbers

The region’s economy tops the list of concerns of Houston-area residents surveyed by Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

Respondents in the Kinder Houston Area Survey, which questioned nearly 9,000 residents of Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, cite the regional economy as the area’s “biggest problem.”

Shrinking confidence in job opportunities and growing household financial pressures fueled the grim economic outlook:

  • The share of residents rating job prospects as “good” or “excellent” fell by more than 25 percentage points, the sharpest single-year decline since the 1980s.
  • Seventy-nine percent of those earning less than $25,000 said they’d be unable to cover an unplanned $400 expense. That was up from 72 percent last year. In the $50,000-to-$99,999 category, the figure was 39 percent, up from 30 percent last year.
  • More than 20 percent of residents said their financial status was worse than it was 12 months earlier.

“These challenges were particularly notable among lower- and middle-earning households,” according to a report about the survey.

Dan Potter, co-director of the institute’s Houston Population Research Center, says the annual survey “provides community leaders and the public with a map of where we’ve been on key issues, where we are now, and what’s of looming importance. It allows everyone to work together toward a better future for our city and our region.”

Houston-based Oxy officially announces CEO transition, names successor

Team Transition

Houston-based Occidental (Oxy) has officially announced its longtime CEO's retirement and her successor.

Oxy shared that Vicki Hollub will retire June 1. Reuters first reported Hollub's plan to retire in March, but a firm date had not been set. Hollub will remain on Oxy's board of directors.

Richard Jackson, who currently serves as Oxy's COO, will replace Hollub in the CEO role.

“It has been a privilege to lead Occidental and work alongside such a talented team for more than 40 years," Hollub shared in a news release. "Following the recently completed decade-long transformation of the company, we now have the best portfolio and the best technical expertise in Occidental’s history. With this strong foundation in place, a clear path forward and a leader like Richard, who has the experience and vision to elevate Occidental, now is the right time for this transition. “I look forward to supporting Richard and the Board through my continued role as a director.”

Hollub has held the top leadership position at Oxy since 2016 and has been with the energy giant for more than 40 years. Before being named CEO, she served as COO and senior executive vice president at the company. She led strategic acquisitions of Anadarko Petroleum in 2019 and CrownRock in 2024, and was the first woman selected to lead a major U.S. oil and gas company.

Hollub also played a key role in leading Oxy's future as a "carbon management company."

Jackson has been with Oxy since 2003. He has held numerous leadership positions, including president of U.S. onshore oil and gas, president of low carbon integrated technologies, general manager of the Permian Delaware Basin and enhanced oil recovery oil and gas, vice president of investor relations, and vice president of drilling Americas.

He was instrumental in launching Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, which focuses DAC, carbon sequestration and low-carbon fuels through businesses like 1PointFive, TerraLithium and others, according to the company. He also serves on the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative’s Climate Investment Board and the American Petroleum Institute’s Upstream Committee. He holds a bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University.

Jackson was named COO of Oxy in October 2025. In his new role as CEO, he will also join the board of directors, effective June 1.

“I am grateful to be appointed President and CEO of Occidental and excited about the opportunity to execute from the strong position and capabilities that we built under Vicki’s leadership,” Jackson added in the release. “It means a lot to me personally to be a part of our Occidental team. I am committed to delivering value from our significant and high-quality resource base. We have a tremendous opportunity to focus on organic improvement and execution to deliver meaningful value for our employees, shareholders and partners.”

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This article first appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Rice Brain Institute awards seed grants for dementia, Alzheimer’s research

brain trust

The recently established Rice Brain Institute awarded 12 seed grants last month to support research on dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders.

The grants are part of the Rice DPRIT Seed Grant Program, which aims to help faculty members generate preliminary data, test and teams that would be supported under the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

The DPRIT was approved last year to provide $3 billion in state funding over a 10-year span for research on dementia prevention and other neurological conditions. It will be modeled after the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), which has awarded nearly $4 billion in grants since 2008.

“DPRIT is a historic initiative with transformative impact potential and at Rice we are very well equipped to contribute to its mission and help make Texas a leader in brain health and innovation,” Behnaam Aazhang, a Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Neuroengineering Initiative and the RBI, said in a news release.

The Rice DPRIT Seed Grant Program is supported by the RBI and the Educational and Research Initiative for Collaborative Health (ENRICH) office at Rice. Most of the funding came from Rice's Office of Research, with a contribution from Rice's Amyloid Mechanism and Disease Center, which also launched last year.

A number of the teams include collaborators from Houston's Texas Medical Center, including Baylor College of Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch and the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.

The 12 teams are:

  • Keya Ghonasgi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rice. Ghonasgi's research addresses the high risk of falls among people with different types of dementia and aims to develop a personalized, home-based fall-prevention approach using textile-integrated wearable sensors.
  • Luz Garcini, associate professor of psychological sciences at Rice, and Hannah Ballard, associate director of community and public health at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice. Garcini and Ballard's research looks at barriers and facilitators to early detection of Alzheimer’s disease in diverse, medically underserved urban communities and focuses on populations that experience late diagnosis, including Hispanic/Latino groups.
  • Lei Li, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, and Pablo Valdes, assistant professor of neurosurgery at UTMB. Li and Valdes' project develops a noninvasive, bedside imaging approach to monitor brain blood flow and oxygenation in patients recovering from stroke or brain surgery using photoacoustic imaging through a specialized transparent skull implant.
  • Cameron Glasscock, assistant professor of biosciences at Rice. Glasscock's project addresses repeat expansion disorders, such as Huntington’s disease and myotonic dystrophy, and focuses on stopping DNA instability before repeats reach a disease-causing threshold.
  • Raudel Avila, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rice. Avila's project focuses on everyday health factors such as nutrition, hydration and brain blood flow and how they influence brain aging long before symptoms of dementia appear.
  • Isaac Hilton, associate professor of bioengineering at Rice, and Laura Lavery, assistant professor of biosciences at Rice. Hilton and Lavery's project uses precise CRISPR-based gene regulation to target multiple genetic drivers of neuronal damage in Alzheimer’s.
  • Quanbing Mou, assistant professor of chemistry at Rice, and Qing-Long Miao, assistant professor of neurology at Baylor College of Medicine. Mou and Miao's project aims to develop a gene-regulation therapy for childhood absence epilepsy by restoring activity of the CACNA1A gene.
  • Momona Yamagami, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, and Christopher Fagundes, professor of psychological sciences at Rice. Yamagami and Fagundes' project addresses the physical and mental health challenges faced by spouses caring for partners with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias and aims to develop algorithms to determine the optimal timing and frequency of supportive text messages.
  • Han Xiao, professor of chemistry at Rice. Xiao's project aims to improve the delivery of antibody therapies to the brain using a noninvasive, light-based approach that temporarily opens the blood–brain barrier.
  • Lan Luan, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice. Luan's project investigates how tiny blood-vessel injuries in the brain, known as microinfarcts, contribute to dementia.
  • Natasha Kirienko, associate professor of biosciences at Rice. Kirienko's project targets a shared cause of neurodegeneration, impaired mitochondrial cleanup, and aims to identify an existing antidepressant that could be repurposed to protect neurons in diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
  • Harini Iyer, assistant professor of biosciences at Rice. Iyer's project will observe zebrafish to investigate how the brain’s primary immune cells become improperly activated in neurological disorders, leading to the loss of healthy neurons and cognitive impairment.

The RBI also named the first four projects to receive research awards through the Rice and TMC Neuro Collaboration Seed Grant Program in January. Read more about those projects here.

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