Houston research breakthrough could pave way for next-gen superconductors

Quantum Breakthrough

Researchers from Rice University say their recent findings could revolutionize power grids, making energy transmission more efficient. Getty Images

A study from researchers at Rice University, published in Nature Communications, could lead to future advances in superconductors with the potential to transform energy use.

The study revealed that electrons in strange metals, which exhibit unusual resistance to electricity and behave strangely at low temperatures, become more entangled at a specific tipping point, shedding new light on these materials.

A team led by Rice’s Qimiao Si, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy, used quantum Fisher information (QFI), a concept from quantum metrology, to measure how electron interactions evolve under extreme conditions. The research team also included Rice’s Yuan Fang, Yiming Wang, Mounica Mahankali and Lei Chen along with Haoyu Hu of the Donostia International Physics Center and Silke Paschen of the Vienna University of Technology. Their work showed that the quantum phenomenon of electron entanglement peaks at a quantum critical point, which is the transition between two states of matter.

“Our findings reveal that strange metals exhibit a unique entanglement pattern, which offers a new lens to understand their exotic behavior,” Si said in a news release. “By leveraging quantum information theory, we are uncovering deep quantum correlations that were previously inaccessible.”

The researchers examined a theoretical framework known as the Kondo lattice, which explains how magnetic moments interact with surrounding electrons. At a critical transition point, these interactions intensify to the extent that the quasiparticles—key to understanding electrical behavior—disappear. Using QFI, the team traced this loss of quasiparticles to the growing entanglement of electron spins, which peaks precisely at the quantum critical point.

In terms of future use, the materials share a close connection with high-temperature superconductors, which have the potential to transmit electricity without energy loss, according to the researchers. By unblocking their properties, researchers believe this could revolutionize power grids and make energy transmission more efficient.

The team also found that quantum information tools can be applied to other “exotic materials” and quantum technologies.

“By integrating quantum information science with condensed matter physics, we are pivoting in a new direction in materials research,” Si said in the release.

---

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

The two entities will collaborate on work focused on "fields of energy and climate; quantum computing and artificial intelligence; global health and medicine; and urban futures." Photo via Rice University

Rice University inks strategic partnership with French research institution

collaboration station

Rice University and Université Paris Sciences & Lettres signed a strategic partnership agreement last week that states that the two institutions will work together on research on some of today's most pressing subject matters.

According to an announcement made on May 13 in Paris, the two schools and research hubs will collaborate on work focused on "fields of energy and climate; quantum computing and artificial intelligence; global health and medicine; and urban futures."

The partnership allows Rice to expand its presence in France, after launching its Rice Global Paris Center about two years ago.

Université PSL consists of 11 top research institutes in France and 2,900 world-class researchers and 140 research laboratories.

“We are honored and excited to partner with Paris Sciences and Lettres University and join forces to advance bold innovation and find solutions to the biggest global challenges of our time,” Rice President Reginald DesRoches said in a statement. “The unique strengths and ambitions of our faculty, students, scholarship and research are what brings us together, and our passion and hope to build a better future for all is what will drive our partnership agenda. Representing two distinct geographic, economic and cultural regions known for ingenuity and excellence, Rice and PSL’s efforts will know no bounds.”

Rice and Université PSL plan to host conferences around the four research priorities of the partnership. The first took place last week at the Rice Global Paris Center. The universities will also biannually select joint research projects to support financially.

“This is a global and cross-disciplinary partnership that will benefit from both a bottom-up, research-driven dynamic and a top-down commitment at the highest level,” PSL President Alain Fuchs said in a statement. “The quality and complementarity of the researchers from PSL and Rice who mobilized for this event give us reason to believe that this partnership will get off to a rapid and productive start. It will offer a strong framework to all the PSL schools for developing collaborations within their areas of strength and their natural partners at Rice.”

Rice launched its Rice Global Paris Center in June 2022 in a historic 16th-century building in Le Marais. At the time it, the university shared that it was intended to support Rice-organized student programs, independent researchers, and international conferences, as well as a satellite and hub for other European research activity.

"Rice University's new home in the Marais has gone from an idea to a mature relative with a robust program of faculty research summits, student opportunities, cultural events and community engagement activities," Caroline Levander, Rice's global Vice President, said at the announcement of the partnership last week.

Click here to learn more about the Global Paris Center.

Last month, University of Houston also signed a memorandum of understanding with Heriot-Watt University in Scotland to focus on hydrogen energy solutions.

------

This article originally ran on EnergyCapital.

Nai-Hui Chia, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice, was recognized for his research on Hamiltonian simulations, a method for representing the motion of moving particles. Photo via Rice.edu

Houston professor earns Google Scholar award for quantum computing research

recent recognition

A Rice University quantum computer scientist was one of 78 global professors to be presented with a 2023 Google Scholar award, the university announced this month.

Nai-Hui Chia, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice, was recognized for his research on Hamiltonian simulations, a method for representing the motion of moving particles. Chia aims to understand if quantum computers or machines can simulate a "Hamiltonian matrix" with a shorter evolution time.

"We call this fast-forwarding for a Hamiltonian simulation,” Chia says in a statement.

Chia aims to use the funds from Google to discover Hamiltonians that can be fast-forwarded using parallelism or classical computation, according to Rice. He will present his current work on Hamiltonians and their connection to cryptology in July at the 2023 Computational Complexity Conference in Warwick, UK.

The Google Research Scholar program grants funds of up to $60,000 to support professors' research around the world. This year's cohort works in fields ranging from algorithms and optimization to natural language processing to health research.

Three other Texas researchers were awarded funds in the 2023 cohort.

The University of Texas at Austin's Jon Tamir was awarded for his work in applied sciences. Atlas Wang, also from UT, was awarded in the machine learning and data mining category. Shenglong Xu, from Texas A&M University, joined Chia in the quantum computing category.

Tech behemoth Google has awarded funds to several Houston innovators in recent years.

Last summer the company named AnswerBite, Boxes and Ease to its inaugural cohort of the Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund. Selected companies received an equity-free $100,000 investment, as well as programming and support from Google.

In September 2022, ChurchSpace and Enrichly were named part of the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund. The companies also received $100,000 non-dilutive awards along with mentoring and support.

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

6 Houston entrepreneurs land on coveted Inc. Female Founders 500 list

the future is female

Six Houston female entrepreneurs and innovators were named to the 2026 Female Founders 500 list.

The annual list compiled by Inc. Magazine recognizes female founders based in the U.S. who have built businesses that have moved their industries forward. The group collectively generated approximately $12.3 billion in 2025 revenue and $12.2 billion in funding to date, according to Inc. Five Houstonians were named to the list last year.

"Each year, we are increasingly amazed by the extraordinary leaders on our Inc. Female Founders 500 list," Bonny Ghosh, editorial director at Inc., said in a news release. "The honorees on this year's list include innovators in AI, beauty and wellness trendsetters winning devoted fans, and nonprofit leaders making a real impact in their communities. Together, they're showing all of us what trailblazing female leadership looks like."

The Houston founders are:

  • Sassie Duggleby, CEO and co-founder of Houston space tech and engine company Venus Aerospace. Duggleby also serves on the Texas Space Commission board of directors.
  • Stephanie Murphy, CEO and executive chairman of Aegis Aerospace, which provides space services, spaceflight product development, and engineering services. Murphy also serves as chair of the Texas Aerospace Research and Space Economy Consortium Executive Committee.
  • Laureen Meroueh, CEO and founder of Hertha Metals, which has developed a cost-effective and energy-efficient process that converts low-grade iron ore of any format directly into molten steel or high-purity iron in a single step.
  • LaToshia Norwood, managing partner of L'Renee & Associates (LRA), a full-service project management consulting firm.
  • Lauren Rottet, president and founding principal of Rottet Studio, an international architecture and design firm focused on corporate, lifestyle and hospitality projects
  • Nina Magon, founder and CEO of Nina Magon Studio / Nina Magon Consumer Products, a residential and commercial interior design company. She also co-founded KA Residences earlier this year.

"Grateful to be recognized again on the Inc. Female Founders 500," Duggleby said in a LinkedIn post. "The best part of building Venus Aerospace has been working with an incredible team pushing the boundaries of flight—and helping bring more women into aerospace along the way.

Meroueh, whose company emerged from stealth last year, voiced a similar push for bringing more women into the fold.

"We've seen a 7x jump in female-led IPOs over the last decade, from just two in 2014 (less than 1% of all IPOs) to 14 in 2024 (nearly 9% of all IPOs). Progress is happening," Meroueh shared in a LinkedIn post. "Yet, less than 1% of venture funding in hard tech goes to female-founded companies. But as my friend Ana Kraft says, the right man for the job may be a woman."

Twenty-nine Texas female founders made this list, including Amber Venz Box, founder of the Dallas-based LTK shopping platform, and Cheryl Sew Hoy, CEO and founder of Austin-based Tiny Health, a fast-growing at-home microbiome health platform. See the full list of winners here.

NASA clears Artemis moon rocket for April launch with 4 astronauts

3, 2, 1...

NASA has cleared its moon rocket on for an April launch with four astronauts after completing the latest round of repairs.

The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket will roll out of the hangar and back to the pad at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, leading to a launch attempt as early as April 1. It will mark humanity's first trip to the moon in more than 50 years.

The Artemis II crew should have blasted off on a lunar flyaround earlier this year, but fuel leaks and other problems with the Space Launch System rocket interfered.

Although NASA managed to plug the hydrogen fuel leaks at the pad in February, a helium-flow issue forced the space agency to return the rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs, bumping the mission to April.

The space agency has only six days at the beginning of April to launch before standing down until April 30 into early May.

"It's a test flight and it is not without risk, but our team and our hardware are ready,” NASA's Lori Glaze told reporters at the end of the two-day flight readiness review.

Glaze and other NASA officials declined to provide the risk probabilities for the upcoming mission.

History has shown that a new rocket has essentially a 50% chance of success, said John Honeycutt, chair of the mission management team.

There's so much gap since the only other SLS flight — more than three years ago without anyone on board — that it's difficult to understand any risk assessment numbers, Honeycutt said.

“It's not the first flight," Glaze said. "But we're also not in a regular cadence. So we definitely have significantly more risk than a flight system that's flying all the time.”

Late last month NASA's new administrator, Jared Isaacman, announced a major overhaul of the Artemis program to speed things up and, by doing so, reduce risk.

Dissatisfied with the slow pace and lengthy gaps between lunar missions, he added an extra practice flight in orbit around Earth for next year. That is now the new Artemis III, with the moon landing by two astronauts shifted to Artemis IV. Isaacman is targeting one and maybe even two lunar landings in 2028.

NASA's Office of Inspector General warned in an audit that the space agency needs to come up with a rescue plan for its lunar crews. Landing near the moon's south pole will be riskier than it was for the Apollo astronauts closer to the equator given the rough polar terrain, according to the report.

The report cited the lunar landers as the top contributor for potential loss of crew during the first few Artemis moon landings. It listed the space agency’s loss-of-crew threshold at 1-in-40 for lunar operations and 1-in-30 for Artemis missions overall.

Contracted by NASA to provide the moon landers for astronauts, Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin have accelerated work in order to meet the new 2028 target date. The inspector general's office said many technical challenges remain including refueling their landers in orbit around Earth before flying to the moon.

NASA sent 24 astronauts to the moon during Apollo, 12 of whom landed on it. All but one of the moonshots — Apollo 13 — achieved their prime objectives. The program ended with Apollo 17 in 1972.

Kinder leads 19 Houstonians on Forbes' World's Billionaires List 2026

World's Richest 2026

According to Forbes, there has “never been a better time to be a billionaire” than in 2026, and the publication's newest World’s Billionaires List has revealed the 19 Houston billionaires that have risen among the wealthiest worldwide.

Kinder Morgan chairman Richard Kinder surpassed hospitality honcho Tilman Fertitta as the richest billionaire in Houston, ranking No. 232 on the global list with an estimated net worth of $13 billion. His net worth has grown by $2.4 billion since last year.

Fertitta, 68, may not be the richest Houstonian anymore, but his wealth is still on the rise. He ranked 268th on the list with an estimated net worth of $11.7 billion, up from $11.3 billion last year.

Out of the 390 billionaire newbies that made their debut onto the list this year, one of them calls Houston home: restaurateur and commodities trader Ignacio Torras. Torras, 61, is the founder and CEO of global commodities trading company Tricon Energy, and he owns Michelin-starred local restaurant BCN Taste & Tradition and its sister eatery MAD. But that's not all he spends his time doing, according to Forbes.

"In 2024 Torras launched a soccer tournament for neurodivergent players called the Genuine Cup," his profile said. "Last year 800 players and 30 teams from around the world played at Rice University stadium."

Torras debuted as No. 2600 on the list with an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion.

Houston-born multi-hyphenate superstar Beyoncé Knowles-Carter also staked a claim among the world's richest people in 2026. She ranked No. 3332 on the list with a net worth of $1 billion, thanks to her "years of music sales, touring and collecting art with her already-billionaire husband Jay-Z (estimated net worth: $2.8 billion)," Forbes said.

"The majority of pop star Beyonce’s net worth comes from her roughly three decades as a solo performer and a member of the girl-group Destiny's Child," her profile said. "She holds the record for the most Grammy wins ever, with 35, and won her first Album of the Year trophy in 2025. She and her billionaire husband Jay-Z purchased a $200 million Malibu mansion in 2023, in what was the most expensive home sale in California history."

Beyoncé also ranks No. 21 in the publication's separate list of The World's Celebrity Billionaires.

Here's how the rest of Houston's billionaires fared on this year's list:

  • Toyota mega-dealer Dan Friedkin: No. 279; $11.4 billion, up from $7.7 billion
  • Pipeline heir Randa Duncan Williams: tied for No. 323 with an estimated net worth of $10.2 billion, up from $9.3 billion in 2025. Fellow pipeline heirs Dannine Avara and Milane Frantz tied for No. 332 globally. Each has an estimated net worth of $10.1 billion, up from $9.2 billion. Scott Duncan ranks No. 353 with a $9.8 billion estimated net worth, up from $9 billion in 2025.
  • Oil tycoon Jeffery Hildebrand: No. 341; $10 billion, up from $7.7 billion
  • Houston Texans owner Janice McNair and family: No. 528; $7.3 billion, up from $6.2 billion
  • Energy exploration chief exec George Bishop of The Woodlands: No. 908; $4.7 billion, down from $5 billion
  • Westlake Corporation co-owners Albert Chao, James Chao and their families: tied for No. 1074; $4 billion, flat from 2025
  • Hedge fund honcho John Arnold: No. 1504; $2.8 billion, down from $2.9 billion
  • Perry Homes executive chair Kathy Britton: No. 1611; $2.6 billion, flat from 2025
  • Houston Astros owner Jim Crane: No. 1676; $2.5 billion, up from $2.4 billion
  • Former Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander: No. 1834; $2.3 billion, up from $1.9 billion
  • Mercedes-Benz mega-dealer Joe Agresti: No. 3185; $1.1 billion, flat from 2025
  • Frontier Airlines chairman William Franke: No. 3332; $1 billion, down from $1.2 billion

Elsewhere in Texas

Austin billionaire Elon Musk was declared the world's richest person for the second consecutive year, and Forbes said his “grip on the top spot is as strong as it’s ever been.”

“Musk became the first person to hit $500 billion in wealth, in October,” Forbes said. “Then $600 billion and $700 billion, within four days in December. Then $800 billion, in February.”

The Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI founder’s current net worth has skyrocketed to $839 billion — a shocking $497 billion more than his 2025 net worth.

In Dallas-Fort Worth, Walmart heiress Alice Walton has maintained her elite status as the world’s richest woman for the third year in a row. Walton is the 14th richest person on the planet with a current net worth of $134 billion, an eye-catching $33 billion higher than her 2025 net worth. She is the first American woman worth $100 billion, and one of only 20 “centi-billionaires” worldwide claiming 12-figure fortunes, also known as the "$100 Billion Club."

Koch Inc. stakeholder Elaine Marshall and her family are the richest Dallas residents, ranking No. 71 globally with an estimated net worth of $30.9 billion. Her net worth has grown by $2.6 billion since last year.

---

This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

View All Listings