3 Houston college students win big in global Intel AI competition

big winners

Three Houston students won at the 2023 Intel AI Global Impact Festival competition. Photo via Intel

Three students from Houston Community College Southwest won the top national prize at the 2023 Intel AI Global Impact Festival competition, HCC announced this month.

Sumesh Surendran, Ruben Treviño, and Muskaan Shahzad won the top spot in the the 18-and-older age group of United States competitors. Their project, “MedINtel: Automated Triage Machine (ATM),” is an ongoing effort for HCC’s AI program.

“Our students have often told me how grateful they are to our faculty and staff for their support and commitment to their success,” Samir Saber, dean of the Digital and Information Technology Center of Excellence, says in a news release.” We’re all proud of bringing home a top award back-to-back from an international competition of this caliber.”

The students' entry involved a kiosk-style version of an ATM to collect data at a patient intake. The kiosk used AI technologies like computer vision, to accelerate and help with patient triage. The festival featured future developers, teachers, policymakers, and emerging technologists sharing innovations and discussions on the impact of artificial intelligence according to the educational partner to HCC’s AI program the Intel Corporation.

“This group of students has demonstrated their exceptional talents on a national and global stage in a rapidly growing field that continues to transform all industry sectors,” HCC Southwest President Madeline Burillo-Hopkins says in the release. “Their innovative project shows why Houston is a city where companies can find the best qualified, competent and creative tech talent.”

HCC’s participation and success in the program is well-documented, as last year during the Intel Global Impact Festival competition, HCC Southwest won top global prize in the 18-and-older age group, and another HCC team took home a national honor.

From Your Site Articles
A team of Houston college students laced in the top 10 percent of 7,800 students at the National Cyber League competition. Photo courtesy of HCC

Houston students place high in national cyber security competition

locking it down

A team from Houston Community College had a strong showing earlier this month at the spring National Cyber League competition.

A team of HCC students placed in the top 10 percent of finishers, according to a statement from the college. More than 7,800 students from 450 universities and colleges across the U.S.competed in the semi-annual competition that tests participants’ skills in identifying hackers from forensic data, penetration testing, auditing vulnerable websites and recovering from ransomware attacks through a series of games.

“Our goal is to empower our students with the knowledge and tools they need to succeed as leaders in information technology, including the fast growing and in-demand areas of cyber security and artificial intelligence,” Dr. Madeline Burillo-Hopkins, president of HCC Southwest College and vice chancellor of workforce, says in a statement. “Again and again, we find that our students perform exceptionally well when compared to those from colleges and universities across the nation.”

Hira Ali, a participant and mother of two who served as vice president of the HCC Cyber Security Club before graduating this year, says the experience pushed her and her teammates to expand their knowledge outside of the classroom.

“It was a great experience for us,” she says in a statement. “It presented us, as teammates, with the opportunity to venture beyond our comfort zones and delve into unfamiliar concepts."

Ali added that she ate almost nothing and slept little for a week because she and her team were "totally immersed in the competition.” She plans to enroll in a four-year online degree program through Dakota State University.

According to Samir Saber, dean of HCC’s Digital, and Information Technology Center of Excellence, there are about 57,878 cyber jobs in Texas alone. HCC also shared that the median salary for security analysts in the Houston area is about $101,000, according to Lightcast, a labor market data analysis firm.

Earlier this month, HCC also announced that it would be rolling out a new innovation 60-hour degree program in the fall. The Smart Building Technology program will train students on the installation of low-voltage controls. Students will receive an Associate of Applied Science degree after completing the program, which is part of HCC Central’s Electrical Technology program in the Architectural Design and Construction Center of Excellence (COE).

In late 2022, HCC and partners also received a $1.8 million grant from JP Morgan Chase to launch a new certificate program to help residents who come from some of Houston’s most underserved and under-resourced neighborhoods find career opportunities in the clean energy, disaster response, utilities, trades and manufacturing fields. Partnering employers included The City of Houston, Harris County and TRIO Electric.

Houston Community College has made a big move to prepare the future of cybersecurity. Photo via Getty Images

Houston college system opens new cybersecurity training facility

future of cyber safety

A center created to train future cybersecurity specialists recently opened at Houston Community College’s West Loop campus.

The center, featuring equipment such as a miniature water plant and a car-hacking workbench, simulates cyberattacks. HCC cybersecurity students will undergo training there. Of the college’s more than 500 cybersecurity students, over 300 are pursuing associate degrees and over 200 are working toward certificates.

“Students who complete an associate degree or certificate in cybersecurity at HCC are landing high-paying jobs right out of the gate such as IT help desk and computer support specialists,” Samir Saber, dean of HCC’s Digital Information and Technology Center of Excellence, says in a news release. “Others go on to become security analysts, security engineers and cybersecurity architects.”

Employers in the U.S. are struggling to fill nearly 715,000 cybersecurity job openings, according to CyberSeek, which tracks supply-and-demand data for the cybersecurity workforce. That number includes more than 83,000 cybersecurity openings in Texas, with nearly 9,300 of those in the Houston area.

In Texas, the annual pay for a cybersecurity worker averages $88,276, according to career platform ZipRecruiter. The national average is $112,974.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts the number of people working as an information security analyst (a subset of the cybersecurity workforce) in this country will rise 33 percent from 2020 to 2030. That makes it one of the fastest-growing occupations in the U.S. From May 2021 through April 2022, there were 180,000 openings for information security analysts, according to CyberSeek.

“Cybersecurity is national security,” says Madeline Burillo-Hopkins, president of HCC Southwest and vice chancellor of HCC Workforce Instruction. “With the opening of the new center, the college is equipping students with the skills needed not only for their careers but also for making a lasting impact on the nation’s security across industries and organizations.”

A $650,000 state grant financed the new training center, and cybersecurity company Grimm helped install the lab and trained HCC cybersecurity instructors.

In 2017, HCC was designated by the National Security Agency as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense. The new lab will help the college maintain that status for another five years, Saber says.

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

Houston geothermal unicorn Fervo officially files for IPO

going public

Fervo Energy has officially filed for IPO.

The Houston-based geothermal unicorn filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on April 17 to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq exchange. Fervo intends to be listed under the ticker symbol "FRVO."

The number and price of the shares have not yet been determined, according to a news release from Fervo. J.P. Morgan, BofA Securities, RBC Capital Markets and Barclays are leading the offering.

The highly anticipated filing comes as Fervo readies its flagship Cape Station geothermal project to deliver its first power later this year

"Today, miles-long lines for gasoline have been replaced by lines for electricity. Tech companies compete for megawatts to claim AI market share. Manufacturers jockey for power to strengthen American industry. Utilities demand clean, firm electricity to stabilize the grid," Fervo CEO Tim Latimer shared in the filing. "Fervo is prepared to serve all of these customers. Not with complex, idiosyncratic projects but with a simplified, standardized product capable of delivering around-the-clock, carbon-free power using proven oil and gas technology."

Fervo has been preparing to file for IPO for months. Axios Pro first reported that the company "quietly" filed for an IPO in January and estimated it would be valued between $2 billion and $3 billion.

Fervo also closed $421 million in non-recourse debt financing for the first phase of Cape Station last month and raised a $462 million Series E in December. The company also announced the addition of four heavyweights to its board of directors last week, including Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay, Hewlett-Packard, and Spring-based HPE.

Fervo reported a net loss of $70.5 million for the 2025 fiscal year in the S-1 filing and a loss of $41.1 million in 2024.

Tracxn.com estimates that Fervo has raised $1.12 billion over 12 funding rounds. The company was founded in 2017 by Latimer and CTO Jack Norbeck.

---

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

New UT Austin med center, anchored by MD Anderson, gets $1 billion gift

Future of Health

A donation announced Tuesday, April 21, breaks a major record at the University of Texas at Austin. Michael and Susan Dell are now UT Austin's first supporters to give $1 billion. In response, the university will create the UT Dell Campus for Advanced Research and the UT Dell Medical Center to "advance human health," per a press release.

The release also records "significant support" for undergraduate scholarships, student housing, and the Texas Advanced Computing Center for supercomputing research.

Both the new research campus and the UT Dell Medical Center will integrate advanced computing into their research and practices. At the medical center, the university hopes that will lead to "earlier detection, more precise and personalized care, and better health outcomes." The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center will also be integrated into the new medical center.

That comes with a numeric goal measured in 10s: raise $10 billion and rank among the top 10 medical centers in the U.S., both in the next decade.

In the shorter term, the university will break ground on the medical center with architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) "later this year."

“UT Austin, where Dell Technologies was founded from a dorm room, has always been a place where bold ideas become real-world impact,” said Michael and Susan Dell in a joint statement.

They continued, “What makes this moment so meaningful is the opportunity to build something that brings every part of the journey together — from how students learn, to how discoveries are made, to how care reaches families. By bringing together medicine, science and computing in one campus designed for the AI era, UT can create more opportunity, deliver better outcomes, and build a stronger future for communities across Texas and beyond.”

This is the second major gift this year for the planned multibillion-dollar medical center. In January, Tench Coxe, a former venture capitalist who’s a major shareholder in chipmaking giant Nvidia, and Simone Coxe, co-founder and former CEO of the Blanc & Otus PR firm, contributed $100 million$100 million.

Baylor scientist lands $2M grant to explore links between viruses and Alzheimer’s

Alzheimer’s research

A Baylor College of Medicine scientist will begin exploring the possible link between Alzheimer’s disease and viral infections thanks to a $2 million grant awarded in March.

Dr. Ryan S. Dhindsa is an assistant professor of pathology & immunology at Baylor and a principal investigator at Texas Children’s Duncan Neurological Research Institute (Duncan NRI). He hypothesizes that Alzheimer’s may have some link to previous viral infections contracted by the patient. To study this intriguing possibility, the American Brain Foundation has gifted him the Cure One, Cure Many award in neuroinflammation.

“It is an honor to receive this support from the Cure One, Cure Many Award. Viral infections are emerging as a major, underappreciated driver of Alzheimer's disease, and this award will allow our team to conduct the most comprehensive screen of viral exposures and host genetics in Alzheimer's to date, spanning over a million individuals,” Dhindsa said in a news release. “Our goal is to identify which viruses matter most, why some people are more vulnerable than others, and ultimately move the field closer to new therapeutic strategies for patients.”

Roughly 150 million people worldwide will suffer from Alzheimer’s by 2050, making it the most common cause of dementia in the world. Despite this, scientists are still at a loss as to what exactly causes it.

Dhindsa’s research is part of a new range of theories that certain viral infections may trigger Alzheimer’s. His team will take a two-fold approach. First, they will analyze the medical records of more than a million individuals looking for patterns. Second, they will analyze viral DNA in stem cell-derived brain cells to see how the infections could contribute to neurological decay. The scale of the genomic data gathering is unprecedented and may highlight a link that traditional studies have missed.

Also joining the project are Dr. Caleb Lareau of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Dr. Artem Babaian of the University of Toronto. Should a link be found, it would open the door to using anti-virals to prevent or treat Alzheimer’s.

View All Listings