5 most popular innovation stories in Houston this week

What's trending

From Houston getting a new biotech accelerator to events you can't miss this month, here's what news trended this week. Photo by PeopleImages

Editor's note: Houston began October with a flurry of innovation news stories, from a new accelerator being launched in town and three innovators to know to events not to miss and a name change for a Houston company. Here are this week's top stories.

3 Houston innovators to know this week

This week's Houston innovators are bringing new exciting things to town. Courtesy photos

New and exciting things are coming to town — from a data-focused conference two two startup development organizations announcing a Houston presence. Here are three Houston innovators making it happen in town. Click here to continue reading.

10+ can't-miss Houston business and innovation events for October

Check out these conferences, pitch competitions, networking, and more. Getty Images

October is another busy one for Houston innovation. Data-focused conferences, a rescheduled grand opening for The Cannon, and so much more. Click here to continue reading.

Exclusive: Houston sports tech company rebrands to attract a wider range of clients

FanReact is now Truss, and the company will be able to reach a greater audience. Photo courtesy of Truss

A Houston company that's specialized in digital sports fan engagement is reinventing itself to grow its client base.

FanReact, which earlier this year spun off its esports business into a new company called Mainline, is now known as Truss. The transition opens doors for the company to reach new clients that aren't in the sports industry — but that maybe want to take a page out of the fan experience's book. Click here to continue reading.

Houston millionaire starts biotech accelerator for companies focusing on regenerative medicine

The new biotech accelerator has already worked with two companies, which have relocated their operations to Houston. Getty Images

A new Houston-based startup accelerator is planning to advance companies focusing on regenerative medicine and stem cell treatment.

Houston Healthspan Innovation Group was created by founder and CEO Ed Bosarge, a local entrepreneur who's made millions of developing health care and finance technology. Click here to continue reading.

Health insurance tech startup taps Texas for its launch due to its large uninsured population

California-based Sidecar Health has rolled out its health insurance tech services in Texas. Images via sidecarhealth.com

The health insurance situation in Texas is anemic.

Last year, 17.7 percent of Texans lacked health insurance, according to newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau. That's the highest rate of uninsured residents among all of the states.

The problem is even more acute in the Houston metro area. In 2018, nearly 1 in 5 residents of the region (18.6 percent) had no health insurance, the Census Bureau says. That's the highest rate of uninsured residents among the country's 25 most populous metro areas.

If you do the math, that translates into more than 5 million residents of Texas, including more than 1.3 million in the Houston area, who have no health-insurance safety net. A startup called Sidecar Health is setting out to reduce those numbers. Click here to continue reading.

This week's Houston innovators are bringing new exciting things to town. Courtesy photos

3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

James Y. Lancaster, Texas branch manager of VIC Technology Venture Development

A new venture development company has expanded into Houston with a Texas Medical Center office. Photo courtesy of James Lancaster

An Arkansas-based technology venture development firm had its eyes on Dallas for a Texas expansion, but James Y. Lancaster had a bigger plan. Lancaster, who was named as VIC Technology Venture Development's Texas branch manager, oversees the company's business in Dallas, Houston, and College Station, where he lives. Locally, he will work out of a TMC Innovation Institute office.

"I am excited to be working to TMC member institutions to provide a new avenue for commercializing their technologies, expanding on our fast start in Texas with an exciting opportunity in the Houston innovation ecosystem," Lancaster says in a release.

VIC specializes in taking university-founded research innovations to the marketplace by partnering with technology and business experts at every stage of the process. Read more.

Suzette Cotto, CEO of Innovate Social Media

Houston's DataCon can help prepare business leaders for the digital revolution in AI and machine learning. Photo courtesy of Suzette Cotto

Suzette Cotto, in a guest column for InnovationMap, warns of a not-so-distant future where artificial intelligence and machine learning are a daily business requirement. As companies ready themselves for this digital commonplace, its the C-suite that needs to do some homework in preparation.

DataCon Houston, which takes place on October 10, is one way for C-level execs to get some information. The annual conference brings important concepts around AI and Automation to business leaders, according to Cotto.

"The target audience is not IT professionals, although there will be some in attendance; it's meant primarily to help the C-suite and non-technical leaders know where to begin and where to find that new vocabulary and translative resources," Cotto writes. "AI will affect every person in every business, and we must be ready for the cultural shifts that will come with the technological shifts." Read more.

Ed Bosarge, founder and CEO of Houston Healthspan Innovation Group

Houston millionaire and serial entrepreneur Ed Bosarge has launched a new biotech accelerator. Courtesy of Houston Healthspan Innovation Group

A serial entrepreneur, Ed Bosarge has launched his latest venture. The Houston Healthspan Innovation Group is a biotech startup accelerator for companies in the regenerative medicine industry.

"From day one, Houston Healthspan will play a significant role in shaping Houston's vibrant life sciences scene with its seasoned leadership and state-of-the-art facilities," Bosarge says in a news release. "Houston Healthspan may be a tipping point for the region's life sciences community."

According to the release, the organization has already worked with two companies that have relocated their office to Houston. Read more.

Houston's DataCon can help prepare business leaders for the digital revolution in AI and machine learning. Getty Images

Houston companies need to get ready for an artificial intelligence and machine learning revolution

The future is now

Looming on the horizon is a data tsunami coming towards us at breakneck speed. Companies have worked hard to keep up, creating digital transformation, taking manual processes from desktops, clipboards, and the paper paradigm to the Cloud. We're now sitting on huge quantities of idle bits of information called dark data. It's over collected and unused data that has the potential power to create decision-making brilliance.

Business leaders are attempting to optimize siloed data – unrelated data collected in databases and spreadsheets or obsolete apps, to make critical decisions. We currently connect these siloes with other systems using a data processing step called ETL – Extract, Transform and Load. Take the data from one place, transform it so it can relate to another data resource and then load that data to another place for analysis. It's a big, time consuming, intermediary step we have figured out how to circumvent. "NoETL" technology is the next-generation magic wand of machine thinking and it's a game-changer.

As non-technical business leaders, we rely on our partners in IT to give us meaningful data that charts our course. They've been our faithful navigators. We've made the recommended investment in IT infrastructure and technology and counted on receiving analytics that will result in winning outcomes. It's now time to sit down at the table and have new conversations with IT leadership around AI.

A tectonic shift

We are now in a new place. AI has come upon us quickly and the promise of ROI is great. There are new technologies that give business leaders advantages never before realized. Data science is the new crystal ball to the future of business. Automation and machine learning are taking historical data to a look ahead using algorithms and mathematical modeling. It's a new predictive mindset. What business leader wouldn't want that crystal ball?

The real assets of your business exist not in better machines but in your current data stores which are like coal mines waiting for data science to turn those lumps of coal into data diamonds.

There are new vocabulary words associated with data analytics. Data science thought leaders are preparing the way for businesses to have learning opportunities and to know which resources to tap for direction in creating new competitive dynamics. Don't wait too long to be curious. The early adopters are already a step ahead and the competitive marketplace is changing in unexpected ways.

Leadership resources for the implementation of AI

Legacy businesses with data lakes are ripe for action. Who should lead the charge? It's up to the C-suite to have intentional conversations around data science. It's up to leadership to be ready to speak and understand new concepts and vocabulary combined with leaps of faith needed to join the new world order of information.

Learning resources

Proactively look for learning opportunities. There are no excuses for not taking the initiative. No matter where you are in your career – this isn't something to linger about.

One upcoming seminar around AI and automation collaboration and education is DataCon Houston. It's an annual conference that brings important concepts around AI and Automation to business leaders. The target audience is not IT professionals, although there will be some in attendance; it's meant primarily to help the C-suite and non-technical leaders know where to begin and where to find that new vocabulary and translative resources. AI will affect every person in every business, and we must be ready for the cultural shifts that will come with the technological shifts.

Authors and thought leaders — George Danner, Dave McComb, and Gerald Kane will be speaking at DataCon October 10, 2019. In addition, Javier Fadul, director of innovation for HTX Labs will be speaking about XR and data visualization and its use in training employees and creating safer workplaces. Stefanos Damianakis will be teaching machine learning 101 and Juan Sequeda, principal scientist of data.world will present his UltraWrap NoETL patented technology.

Solving the unsolvable

The future of decision-making will render in blinks of an eye. Problems we thought unsolvable will suddenly have answers. Business leaders must get behind the leap of faith required for our own companies and push learning and understanding forward across the organization at all levels. AI and machine learning are the vortex of change. Are you ready for AI?

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Suzette Cotto is CEO of Innovate Social Media, a digital marketing agency specializing marketing for startups in the medical, technology, and energy industries. For more information on DataCon Houston 2019, please visit: https://incitelogix.com/datacon-houston-2019/

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Houston cleantech company sees shining success with gold hydrogen

bling, bling

Houston-based cleantech startup Cemvita Factory is kicking things into high gear with its Gold Hydrogen product.

After successfully completing a pilot test of Gold Hydrogen in the oil-rich Permian Basin of West Texas, Cemvita has raised an undisclosed amount of funding through its new Gold H2 LLC spin-out. The lead investors are Georgia-based equipment manufacturer Chart Industries and 8090 Industries, an investment consortium with offices in New York City and Los Angeles.

Gold Hydrogen provides carbon-neutral hydrogen obtained from depleted oil and gas wells. This is achieved through bioengineering subsurface microbes in the wells to consume carbon and generate clean hydrogen.

Cemvita says it set up Gold H2 to commercialize the business via licensing, joint ventures, and outright ownership of hydrogen assets.

“We have incredible conviction in next-generation clean hydrogen production methods that leverage the vast and sprawling existing infrastructure and know-how of the oil and gas industry,” Rayyan Islam, co-founder and general partner of 8090 Industries, says in a news release.

Traditional methods of producing hydrogen without greenhouse gas emissions include electrolysis powered by renewable sources like wind, solar or water, according to Cemvita. However, production of green hydrogen through normal avenues eats up a lot of energy and money, the startup says.

By contrast, Cemvita relies on depleted oil and gas wells to cheaply produce carbon-free hydrogen.

“The commercialization and economics of the hydrogen economy will require technologies that produce the hydrogen molecule at a meaningful scale with no carbon emissions. Gold H2 is leading the charge … ,” says Jill Evanko, president and CEO of Chart Industries.

Investors in Cemvita include Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, an investment arm of Houston-based Occidental Petroleum, as well as BHP Group, Mitsubishi, and United Airlines Ventures.

Oxy Low Carbon Ventures and United Airlines Ventures are financing Cemvita’s work on sustainable jet fuel. United Airlines operates a hub at George Bush Intercontinental Airport Houston.

Founded by brother-and-sister team Moji and Tara Karimi in 2017, Cemvita uses synthetic biology to turn carbon dioxide into chemicals and alternative fuels.

Houston named best city in Texas and No. 11 in U.S. in prestigious report

best in tx

At least according to one new report, Houston is not only the Energy Capital of the World but also the livability capital of Texas.

A new study from Best Cities, powered by Resonance Consultancy, puts Houston at No. 11 among the best cities in the U.S. That’s the top showing among the six Texas cities included in the ranking. Houston appeared at No. 17 on last year’s list.

“Educated, diverse and hard-working, Houston is America’s stealthy powerhouse on the rise,” Best Cities proclaims.

Best Cities notes that while Austin grabs much of the best-city attention, “the promise of the Lone Star State drawing Californians and New Yorkers is quietly being fulfilled in Houston.” The website points out that the Houston metro area has gained nearly 300,000 residents in the past year, thanks to both domestic and international migration.

Here are some of the individual rankings that contribute to Houston’s 11th-place finish:

No. 4 for restaurants
No. 7 for culture
No. 8 for foreign-born population

“Houston is a diverse and vibrant metro where individuals can start a family, grow their business, attend world-class institutions and universities, or be immersed in the 145 languages that are spoken by our residents,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner says in a news release. “The quality of life we have in Houston is second to none, and the data we receive from placements such as … Best Cities further reaffirm the strength and resiliency that has come to define this great city of ours.”

A few spots behind Houston on the Best Cities list are No. 14 Dallas and No. 15 Austin.

What lifts Dallas to the No. 14 spot? These are some of the factors cited by Best Cities:

Location of more than 10,000 corporate headquarters
Strong showing (No. 2) in the airport connectivity category
Kudos for the soon-to-be-expanded Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center Dallas
Home of the country’s sixth largest LGBTQ+ community
Presence of the 28-block, 68-acre Dallas Arts District

Austin comes in at No. 15, one notch behind Dallas.

Best Cities praises Austin as “a place that’s incredibly livable. Talk to any entrepreneur leaving Silicon Valley or Seattle and chances are they’ve considered Austin.”

The website points to a number of Austin’s assets, such as:

Growing presence of Fortune 500 headquarters
Comparatively low unemployment rate
Location of the University of Texas’ flagship campus
Status as the Live Music Capital of the World
Home of the annual SXSW gathering

Two other Texas cities make the Best Cities list: No. 34 San Antonio and No. 94 McAllen.

Best Cities bases its list of the best U.S. cities on Resonance Consultancy’s combination of statistical performance plus qualitative evaluations by locals and visitors. Those figures are grouped into six main categories. This year’s ranking features 100 U.S. cities. To come up with the ranking, Resonance Consultancy assessed all U.S. metro areas with at least 500,000 residents.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

How a Houston med device startup pivoted to impact global health and diagnostics

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 153

In the span of a couple years, a Houston startup went from innovating a way for patients with degenerative eye diseases to see better to creating a portable and affordable breath-based diagnostics tool worthy of a prestigious grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

Steradian Technologies, founded in 2018, set out to create human super-sight via proprietary optics. In early 2020, the company was getting ready to start testing the device and fundraising. Then, the pandemic hit, knocking the company completely off course.

Co-founder and CEO of the company, Asma Mirza, says on this week's Houston Innovators Podcast that the Steradian co-founders discussed how their optic technology could detect diseases. Something just clicked, and the RUMI device was born.

"We are from Houston, Texas, which is one of the most diverse and accessible cities in the country, and we were having trouble with basic diagnostic accessibility. It was taking too long, it was complicated, and people were getting sick and didn't know if they were positive or negative," Mirza says on the show. "That's when we pivoted the company and decided we were going to pivot the company and use optics to detect diseases in breath."

Fast forward two years and the company has been recognized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with a grant to sport the development of the tool — which costs about the same price as a latte to make. The impact for global health is huge, Mirza says, allowing for people to test their breath for diseases from their own homes in the same time it takes to take your temperature.

"You blow into a cartrige and we're able to take the air from your breath into a liquid sample," Mirza says, explaining how the device uses photons to produce quick results. "It's wild that we still don't have something like that yet."

She shares more details about the grant and the future applications for the technology — as well as the role Houston and local organizations have had on the company — on the podcast. Listen to the interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.

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