A new energy-focused startup accelerator hopes to better connect the dots between big companies and tech startups. Getty Images

While being renown as the energy capital of the world, Houston doesn't have an active oil and gas-focused accelerator program for the various startups rising in the energy industry. That is, until now.

Houston-based BBL Ventures, an early stage capital fund for energy startups, has announced BBL Labs, a new accelerator is based in Station Houston. BBLL is accepting applications for its inaugural cohort by February 22.

"BBLV looks forward to engaging in this partnership to drive entrepreneurial innovation focused on identified challenges and technology gaps in the global energy and natural resources industry," says Patrick Lewis, managing partner at BBLVentures, in a release.

BBLL will use BBLV's data on what the oil and gas industry needs from new tech startups as well as its connections to big energy companies to better connect the dots within the accelerator program.

Historically, tech startups focused on oil and gas solutions have a lot of trouble finding funding and validation in the industry — for a few reasons, Lewis says. On one hand, there's a disconnect between oil and gas companies and the startups that have solutions to industry problems, and on the other, the VC funds aren't there.

"Energy tech is a grossly underfunded industry. Venture capitalists hate it — the hyper cyclical industry, extremely long sales cycles, slow adopters — but that creates opportunities," Lewis says.

So what BBL's venture arm has done is flip the script on this way energy startups and big oil companies have traditionally functioned. Currently, it's up to the energy startups to tell large energy companies why their company or industry needs new technology to solve a problem. But what BBL has realized with it's venture arm is that it's much more efficient if the industry figures out its greatest technology needs and then looks for companies solving that problem. To do that, BBL's Innovation Navigator Software acts as a tool for energy employees to identify pain points.

"We've built software that's meant to be used pervasively across the organization — from the drilling engineer out in the field to the global office manager to the CTO," Lewis says.

These employees can log their daily pain points in the system, categorize them, and flag their priority. BBL takes that information, develop a reverse pitch, and market it to the startup ecosystem globally to identify companies that are addressing the problems of these energy employees.

BBL will use this proprietary pain point data to drive the new accelerator to produce a cohort of 10 startups creating technology that oil and gas companies have already indicated they need. Each cohort will go through six months of programing located in Station Houston. The two entities will collaborate on resources including lab space, investment, advisory services, mentorship, and more.

"Station Houston exists to support startups and with BBL Labs now inside our four walls, we can offer the Houston startup community access to even more resources and support," says Station CEO Gabriella Rowe. "At the same time, our 130 mentors are ready to roll up their sleeves and help these businesses get off the ground and start making an impact."

Validere, a Canada-based energy logistics company, is expanding in Houston. Courtesy of Validere

Canadian startup fresh off $7 million seed funding raise picks Houston for U.S. expansion

Energy Tech

Houston's established reputation as the energy capital of the world combined with burgeoning tech scene has made the city attractive for a growing oil and gas company with roots in Canada.

Validere is an oil and gas company focused on using real-time data and both artificial and human intelligence insights to improve its clients' quality, trading, and logistics. The company's technology enhances the ability of oil and gas traders to make informed decisions, which currently are made based off unreliable product quality data. Annually, $2 trillion of product moves around the oil and gas industry, and Validere uses the Internet of Things to improve the current standard of decision making.

"It's like if you'd go to the grocery store to buy milk not knowing if it's 1 percent, 2 percent, or cream," co-founder Nouman Ahmad says about how companies are currently making oil and gas trading decisions.

In October, Validere concluded its seed funding round with $7 million. Among Validere supporters are several Silicon Valley power players, such as Sallyport Investments, Y Combinator, Real Ventures, Moment Ventures, and ZhenFund. The funds, in part, will help the company expand into the United States market.

"The goal in 2019 is to be at the same stage — in terms of customer success — in the U.S. market as we were at the end of 2018 in the Canadian market," Ahmad says.

The company has seen great success in Canada, and some of its existing clients have business in the Houston area already, Ahmad says.

With the increased focus on Houston comes a growing office. Currently, Ahmad leads the efforts in town with one other staffer, however, operations won't be a skeleton crew for too much longer. Ahmad says he is "aggressively hiring" in the Bayou City, which will be a key office for them as they grow across the country.

"As we think about the long-term future of the business, Houston is one of the most important markets for us going forward," Ahmad says.

Houston has been a welcoming community to the Canadian transplant, who says he spends most of his time here now. Both the startup and tech scenes in Houston have been valuable resources to the company — as has the energy industry's potential clients.

"Houston market is very receptive and ready for innovative companies that are solving problems for them," Ahmad says.

The company was founded in 2015 at Harvard by entrepreneurs who saw the potential for better transparency in the oil and gas industry. Validere's other co-founder and CTO, Ian Burgess, first had the idea for the technology after an accident happened in Canada; a train carrying crude oil derailed and blew up a small town killing 45 people.

"The industry largely bases important operational decisions on poor quality data," Burgess says in a release. "Our platform not only informs product quality reliably and in real time, but it also uses AI to help oil and gas companies optimize product movement."

SafePass is a reusable visitor pass for large campuses — corporate, schools, oil and gas, etc. — that need a digital system to protect both the campus and the visitor. Photo via safepassglobal.com

Houston tech company aims to make campuses more secure with tracking device

Can't pass this up

There's an only public service announcement from the 1960s that asks, "It's 10:00 p.m., do you know where your children are?" The idea behind it was to encourage parents to ensure their children's safety, by encouraging them to be home before what was then the youth curfew in several states.

"Do you know where your visitors are right now?" asks the SafePass website, providing an answer: "You do if you have SafePass."

The visitor management system is the brainchild of Ronald Huff, who initially envisioned the system as a hall pass for students. The electronic pass would monitor students in real time, if they left class to go to the nurse or the restroom, meaning adults would be able to find them in the event of an emergency. But as Huff and his business partners proceeded through product development, they realized SafePass had a stronger lure as a system that could manage visitors across several platforms – business, schools, and secure environments.

The system works like this: companies issue a SafePass visitor badge to visitors, contractors or others who are temporarily on the grounds of their facilities. The badge records signal strengths from WiFi routers set up around the facility and tracks where the visitor is in real time.

"Visitors don't know a facility as well as the people who work there every day do," said Huff. "If there's smoke or a fire, they might get lost. So, SafePass helps provide a record of where they are, meaning that people can find them if there's an emergency or an evacuation."

SafePass is also reusable. The electronic badge is designed to be used over and over again, unlike common printed paper badges that visitors stick on.

"We're 100 percent eco-friendly," said Huff.

He and his partners built the demo for the product at the end of 2017 and began shopping it at trade shows. The reaction was immediate, with multiple companies wanting to take on the system. SafePass is about to launch a pilot phase with some Fortune 100 companies, and has plans to expand soon beyond that.

Companies can currently email their floor plans to SafePass, which creates routes within the floor plans, fixing geolocations. Then the signal strength from WiFi routers is digitally mapped within the building using an Android app. This allows the electronic badge to know where a guest is as he or she is traveling throughout a given facility.

"I think most people know that cell phones record almost everything we do," said Huff, explaining that SafePass isn't designed to infringe on personal privacy. "This isn't a Big Brother situation. Above all else, we're concerned about the safety of both people who are visiting a facility and those who work there every day."

Huff said SafePass can also help companies with safety and security compliance. For instance, oil and gas companies are audited by third parties on how secure their facilities are. SafePass' technology helps them not only score higher on an audit, but actually keep their facilities secure.

"A product like ours solves so many different problems," he said.

After nearly two and half years of development, Huff said he's excited about what's to come.

"This is really my baby," he said of the company. "And it's been such a blessing to work with this team of developers and programmers and sales people. We've got a great team and great clients. This is a dream come true."

SafePass has made a splash on the Houston digital innovation scene and was even named one of the most promising startups at the recent Texas Digital Summit.

Houston-based MacroFab has created the Uber or Airbnb of electronics manufacturing. Getty Images

Houston electronics manufacturing company gears up for growth

On the line

It takes an unnecessarily long time for electronic devices to get from idea to reality — and much of that is due to inefficiency in manufacturing. Just getting a prototype together takes weeks of back and forth between the engineer and the manufacturer.

"The business model for contract manufacturing hadn't changed in 30 years," Chris Church says. "It was phone calls, emails, going out and playing golf, going to lunch, and negotiating everything endlessly."

Houston-based MacroFab is addressing these antiquated and outdated ways of manufacturing and changing the way electronics manufacturing is done. For its revolutionary work, the company has consistently seen its revenue at least double — sometimes tripling or quadrupling — every year, and projects to at least triple in 2019.

Addressing an underserved market
Church — who has a background in hardware development, specifically within robotics — created MacroFab in 2013 and launched the platform in 2015. Misha Govshteyn joined the board in 2014 and became CEO last summer. The duo co-founded cloud-based security-as-a-service company, Alert Logic, in Houston in 2002.

Using its custom software, MacroFab enables customers to upload their designs through the website, where they can then receive projected timeline and pricing information from the get go. The company has its own manufacturing area in its office for prototypes and small orders, but its network of large manufacturers is a key part of the MacroFab's growth equation.

The company has about 20 manufacturing plants as partners that can pick up manufacturing jobs from MacroFab customers when the plant has space on its lines up for grabs. Rather than let available capacity go to waste, these plants can easily pick up the design and materials to start production.

"It's not dissimilar to what Uber is doing with cars — there's a lot of people with cars that could give you a ride if they knew you were out there," Govshteyn says. "It's that matchmaking function is essentially what we're doing with our customers."

The manufacturing partners benefit from jobs they otherwise wouldn't have, and the MacroFab customers get access to a plant that they didn't have to do the legwork to find. Govshteyn says a he's heard horror stories from people who had orders that were unceremoniously dropped by a manufacturer because another one of its clients just placed a large order.

"That shouldn't happen. If a factory gets too busy, it should be easy enough to take that job and move it somewhere else," Govshteyn says. "But, right now, there's not a way to do that."

Using cloud technology, the MacroFab platform can easily share the design and translate it to any given factory, Church says. They also have a technology that combine smaller orders together so there's no wasted resources, which brings down the cost for the customer.

While usually a company might have to find a new manufacturer as they scale up and start making larger orders, MacroFab customers don't have to start from scratch to find a new plant that can take their order — MacroFab will do the matchmaking for them.

"We've created and are continuing to build a marketplace for excess manufacturing capacity," Church says.

MacroFab owns the customer experience and the sales aspect — ensuring a more positive and consistent experience — while the manufacturers can just take the jobs and go.

Scaling up
The manufacturing marketplace is a newer focus for MacroFab — the company just launched it in beta this year — and is a big proponent of the company's growth. Before, the company was limited to what it could produce in its own factory taking on prototype and small orders. Now, with access to the manufacturers, the company has served 1,700 customers, building 500,000 units for about 4,000 different products. Those figures, Church says, are scaling up so rapidly as they expand to new partners.

"This is the first quarter where more gets produced outside of our factory than inside of it," Govshteyn says. "By this time in Q1, 75 percent of our revenue will [come from outside manufacturing plants.]"

Since manufacturing plants haven't historically collaborated, Govshteyn says the reception from manufacturers has been "cautiously optimistic." But then they realize they are getting customers for free — all they have to do is meet the requirements and deliver on time, he says.

"It's great for them to see that their factory is only half used, but then they can fill it up with jobs from MacroFab," Govshteyn says.

Houston has been a great city for MacroFab with its port manufacturing and logistics, two things Govshteyn says MacroFab is focusing on.

"At the end of the day, we're a manufacturing company, and I think we'll dabble in logistics," he says. "There's a lot worse places to start a logistics-heavy company."

Lori-Lee Emshey's Future Sight AR is revolutionizing antiquated construction tools using augmented reality. Courtesy of Future Sight AR

Houston company has sight set on AR solutions for industrial construction

Visual aid

When Lori-Lee Emshey got her first oil and gas construction job in Australia, she was carrying around a backpack full of papers.

"I was really shocked at how much work they were doing with such little technology," Emshey says. "I thought, 'there's so much room for innovation here.'"

She realized that it wasn't just that site or the company she was working for — this was a problem across the industry. So, she came up with a solution. Houston-based Future Sight AR is an augmented reality technology to more efficient work on industrial construction sites. Workers can use a smart device in the field, point it at a problem on site, log the issue, and see the steps needed to fix it.

Constructing a company
Emshey realized the potential for a company in January 2016. Since then, she's partnered up with her co-founders, Sofia Lazaro and Veena Somareddy, attended accelerators and conferences across the country, completed a proof of concept, until finally incorporated this year.

It was a well-paced start for the company because they got to prove time and time again there was a need for the company. Emshey says she never wanted to start a company just to start a company. They worked tirelessly at the beginning to ensure there was no one out there already doing this in the way they were doing it.

"I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs now become an entrepreneur because it's trendy and cool, and you want to put it in your Instagram bio," she says. "The three of us aren't like that. We did this because we had to. It wasn't going to get done another way, and we couldn't let this giant opportunity float on by."

Once they got a firm footing, one of the challenges they faced was communicating the company's market need and how the technology works to individuals outside the industry. For Emshey, this was particularly annoying.

"I came from a journalism background, and it's storytelling," she says. "I thought, 'I should be able to do this.'"

Something eventually just clicked, and Emshey stopped seeing confused faces in response to her presentation, and she started seeing more head nodding. However, another challenge she says she occasionally faces is how she looks.

"It is tough. I'm pitching this industrial construction startup, and I show up and I'm a 5-foot-5 blond woman," she says. "And some people don't care, and some people would prefer I looked a different way."

Foreseeing the company's future
Raising capital has been the latest focus for Future Sight AR. Aside from some grants and accelerator money, the company hasn't raised much. They've only just started meeting with investors and have a plan to launch a round of fundraising next year. Emshey also says they are looking to partner with three companies to conduct a few pilots early next year.

It's a great time in technology for Future Sight AR as more and more people are using AR and virtual reality. People use AR or VR often — in SnapChat filters or through Pokemon Go!

Emshey says she thinks VR will grow first in gaming, while AR will take off through enterprise.

"Unlike VR when you're completely immersed, in AR, you're seeing your actual environment and one of the places you have to do that is at work," Emshey says.

Whether it's through being acquired or growing the company on its own, Emshey says she wants Future Sight AR to evolve the industry as a whole.

"If we could permanently change the way that we build projects — oil and gas or another industry — and move it toward something more efficient, safer, more productive, and a better experience for workers, and accomplish that in a permanent way in a permanent way, then we're successful," she says. "We really built this for me — I was the worker out in the field trying to do things, and it was unnecessarily difficult."

Every penny counts when you're starting a company. Getty Images

4 financial concerns to keep in mind when launching a startup

Must be the money

You have been working on a new creative technology idea for months, an idea that will solve a problem or make a current process even better. Your innovative idea is ready for the next step, and you, in turn, are prepared to begin your tech startup. Building a company can be stressful and exhausting, but also exhilarating and rewarding. As you begin your product launch, keep these financial tips in mind when starting out.

Consider your funding
Determine how much funding you can use from your personal accounts to jumpstart your business. By investing some of your own money into your company, you show good faith in your business plan and product. This method is appealing to investors because it shows you have a long-term commitment to the company. Next, determine how much you will need from other sources and what those other sources should be. Potential options of funding in addition to traditional bank loans are venture capitalists, angel investors, government grants, and support from business incubators.

Determine your budget
An essential step of starting up is concluding how much funding you need to get started. Establishing a realistic budget is crucial. It can make the difference between having a successful business or joining the 50 percent of small businesses that fail in the first four years. The hiring of employees, leasing office space or lab space, purchasing office equipment, paying for insurance (health and liability) and providing yourself a salary are all items that need to be included in your budget.

Unanticipated extra costs occur from time to time, so overestimate your expenses. Underestimating expenses can sink your startup. Ensure your business is solvent by preparing your budget for more. Additionally, keep in mind different types of expenses, and budget accordingly. For example, you may have one-time costs and on-going costs or fixed costs and variable costs.

Cash flow
According to a U.S. Bank Study, 82 percent of businesses that fail do so because of cash flow problems. Managing your cash flow is crucial to success. Without positive cash flow, you are not able to pay your employees, rent, or taxes. Having profits does not necessarily mean you have positive cash flow. Keep ongoing cash flow work sheets to ensure you have the cash you need to continue on a successful path.

Managing for life
As mentioned earlier, make sure you pay yourself something. It does not have to be a big salary in the beginning, but you need to eat. Additionally, you need to save for emergencies. An old rule of thumb states that an emergency fund should consist of three to six months' worth of expenses. As a result, an emergency fund can make the months where business is slow, or between projects, more sustainable.

Meanwhile, it is a good idea to separate your personal and business banking accounts. Doing so will allow you to stay more organized and help tracking and managing expenses easier. Additionally, separate accounts may be beneficial when paying taxes. Consult a tax professional for additional guidance on taxes. Finally, do not forget to save for your retirement. While it is important to focus on your new business, do not neglect to take care of your personal financial health.

With proper planning and continued financial monitoring, starting your own tech business can be done well and bring years of career satisfaction.

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Joseph Radzwill is senior vice president and a financial adviser with the wealth management division of Morgan Stanley in Houston.

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Houston founders launch edtech startup, pilot to pinpoint why students are struggling

learning gaps

Early detection. It sounds simple enough: identify a problem before it has the chance to become a bigger one.

But in practice, early detection is much more difficult to navigate, especially in education, when it comes to identifying the reasons behind a student's academic struggles.

That’s why co-founders Alapati “Al” Ware and Estela Montanez launched Progress Report, a Houston-built K-12 learning-intelligence platform designed to go beyond identifying that a student is struggling.

The platform recently began its pilot program with 35 educators and more than 200 students in Texas and Arizona.

“It’s a micro-learning school that works with children with disabilities, primarily dyslexia and nonverbal students,” Ware tells InnovationMap.

The platform is also being used by homeschool parents, home teachers and Houston educators, including those at SWPS College & Career Preparatory Academy, a Houston charter school.

Ware says Progress Report was designed to fill a gap he and Montanez saw in existing edtech. Some platforms cater almost entirely to students, leaving teachers with little insight into if and how a child is learning. Others focus heavily on district data, where “the student is just a number,” leaving teachers to navigate disconnected tools.

“Our goal was [to] focus purely on the teacher because the teacher is the backbone,” Ware says.

Progress Report traces student performance to learning gaps and prerequisite skills, helping educators understand not only where a student is struggling, but what may be causing it.

The platform then helps teachers build individualized instruction for general education students, students with special education and Individualized Education Program (IEP) needs, and Spanish-speaking learners—all within one educator-controlled system.

The goal is to reduce the guesswork and hours of manual work educators can spend developing individualized lesson plans.

Progress Report helps idenitify learning gaps and common roadblocks for each student. Image courtesy Progress Report

For Ware and Montanez, the mission is also personal.

The concept dates back to around 2023, when the co-founders first had to navigate and address their children’s educational needs.

Ware, Progress Report’s CEO and CTO with a background in edtech, built the platform end-to-end after watching his daughter, who had an IEP related to speech, struggle to get the support she needed.

Montanez, the company’s COO, brought another perspective. Her son is on the autism spectrum. She now leads Progress Report’s operations, partnerships and pilot execution while helping carry its focus on bilingual families from Puerto Rico to Houston.

Together, they began researching ways to personalize their children’s learning and help them progress academically. Montanez’s son went on to become an AP student and high school athlete, while Ware’s daughter began reading more than two grade levels above her grade, they tell InnovationMap.

But Progress Report isn’t designed simply to give a struggling student more work.

Take a student who appears to have difficulty with math.

The problem may not actually be math, the founders share. The student could understand the calculations but struggle to comprehend complex words used in a math problem.

Progress Report is designed to trace those performance patterns back to learning gaps, prerequisite skills or other instructional barriers. From there, it can recommend a next instructional step while leaving the educator in control.

The same concept applies to accommodations.

The system can read IEPs, 504 Plans, Present Levels of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance (PLAAFPs), evaluations and other special education records. Approved IEP goals can then be mapped into the student’s learning graph, while accommodations can carry over into lesson planning and question delivery.

The founders say that approach separates Progress Report from simply adding another artificial intelligence chatbot to a classroom. And still, they believe teachers have to remain at the center.

Teachers, in fact, helped build Progress Report.

The founders began meeting with Houston-area educators months before the pilot. Their feedback helped shape the platform before testing began.

“We’ve been building alongside these educators,” Ware says.

Parents are another piece.

Progress Report can give parents access to their child’s learning record so they can see learning gaps as they develop. Teachers can also see information on work being completed at home when the parent and educator are working together.

After the pilot wraps, Ware and Montanez plan to introduce a $29.99 monthly subscription for homeschool parents, teachers and other educators. They say the price was intentionally kept relatively low to help make the tools more accessible.

They are also exploring ways to work with organizations that could help families who can’t afford the platform.

Moving forward, the goal is considerably bigger.

Over the next five years, Ware and Montanez want Progress Report to become what they describe as a “gold standard” in every state. They know getting there will require building relationships with educators, technology leaders, policymakers and school board members.

For now, they’re starting with a few hundred students and a question that sounds simple but can be remarkably difficult to answer: Why is this student struggling?

If Progress Report works the way its founders envision, teachers and parents will have a clearer answer.

Pioneering cohousing development opens in Houston's historic 2nd Ward

Housing in Hou

An experimental, multi-generational building in the East End is now open and accepting residents. Only 10 of the 33 units remain available at East End Commons, the first project from CoHousing Houston.

Located at 115 Lenox, East End Commons was first conceived in 2017 and is designed to combine the security of home ownership with the community aspect of apartment life, essentially a condominium but with added focus on bringing neighbors together.

Units range from 900-2,000 square feet, offering ample private home space, but with a large Common House area and central courtyard for gatherings, working, and interaction. Large front porches encourage people to spend time outside where they can meet their neighbors, as do extensive foot paths for casual meetings.

"At East End Commons, you know your neighbors before you move in — so you have a network of people and spaces that are immediately there for you," said founding resident Kelli Soika. "We designed for larger shared spaces versus larger personal spaces in order to foster the breakdown of the barriers that lead to loneliness."

Combating loneliness and isolation is certainly necessary. A 2025 survey conducted by the American Psychological Association shows that most Americans feel a sense of societal division and lonely. A loss of "third spaces," where people gather outside the home or work, is a prime factor. East End Commons aims to alleviate some of that disconnectedness.

"I wanted to live in a neighborhood that is imbued with a sense of community above the individual, like we have all experienced in Houston during times of disaster recovery," said Lynn Morstead, one of East End Commons‘ founding residents. "In those instances, such as Hurricane Harvey, we surface from our separateness and come together in new and unexpected ways. With East End Commons, the goal is to translate that notion beyond a set period of time and make it a fixture of everyday life. I call it 'disaster-free neighborliness.'"

East End Commons was designed by Kathleen English of English + Associates. Sustainability is part of the project's design, with amenities such as geothermal heating and cooling exchange HVAC, pre-heated water systems, low-energy use air conditioning and heating, and native landscaping.

Prices for units range from $300,000 to the $900,000s, which can be more than double the home price in the rapidly gentrifying East End. HOA fees not only help maintain communal areas, they also cover shared internet, water, and other communal expenses. Similarly, government of the building is handled democratically via a community board that aims to make decisions by building consensus.

For more information, email info@cohousinghouston.com or call 832-900-2919.

MD Anderson president to retire after nine years, interim successor named

retirement plan

An era is ending at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

On Aug. 26, Dr. Peter WT Pisters announced his plans to retire from his role as president of the comprehensive cancer center. He will work on a smooth transition of leadership with interim president Dr. Jeffrey E. Lee throughout September.

“I first arrived at UT MD Anderson 32 years ago with a passion for doing everything I could to advance our mission to end cancer. Serving as the only faculty member to become president, and now marking nine years in the role, I can say with great pride and gratitude that there is no better place than UT MD Anderson to turn hope into healing for patients and families everywhere,” Pisters said in a news release. “With a timeless strategy, a strong leadership team, unprecedented levels of financial health, and a priceless culture anchored in our deeply held Core Values, now is the right time for me to transition to other opportunities. UT MD Anderson has never been stronger, and its future has never been brighter.”

Pisters assumed the presidency in 2017 and helped launch some of the most cutting-edge new clinics in MD Anderson history. One of those was the James P. Allison Institute, named for the Nobel Laureate scientist who discovered a way to suppress immune response on tumors so that immune cells would attack cancer cells instead. As head of his titular clinic, Allison pioneered several new immunotherapies against cancer.

Pisters also oversaw the creation of the Institute for Data Science in Oncology in 2024, an innovative consortium of scientists dedicated to enhancing single-cell imaging to improve precision in cancer treatments. The institute also brought together teams to use data-driven analytics regarding safety, quality and access.

The UT System Board of Regents praised the leadership and work of Pisters in a statement, wishing him well in the next phase of his career.

“The Board of Regents and I are profoundly grateful to Dr. Pisters for his exceptional presidency over the past nine years and for thoughtfully concluding his service when UT MD Anderson is thriving at its best position of peak performance, strength and impact. We wish him our very best with his retirement and in his next chapter,” Kevin P. Eltife, chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, added in the release.