Houston expert: How to build a research consortium

houston voices

Building a consortium is a model that increases productivity both as a way to provide financial support and as a way to have a large group working on a single goal and to build a consistent cash flow to support a graduate research program. Graphic by Miguel Tovar/University of Houston

Most principal investigators spend many hours laboring over proposals to fund their research programs – and for good reason. While competing for funding is the big business for researchers, some have opted to fund their programs in other ways, like building a research consortium.

The word "consortium" means a group of individuals, companies or governments that work together to achieve a specific purpose. Research consortia are generally partnerships between institutions and industry, where several companies in a specific industry sector will pay an annual fee to be a part of the university-led consortium. In return, the university will research solutions to critical problems identified by the company and provide critical research data.

Considering a consortium

Professor Paul Mann, a geologist at the University of Houston, has successfully run a consortium of energy companies since 2005, funding up to 20 graduate and undergraduate research students every year. He routinely brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in funding and has students working on solutions for geologic problems in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and the circum-Atlantic margins.

"Academic research consortia are a great way to fund research programs long term," said Mann. "Each company puts a certain amount of money in to fund a specific project and it creates a smoother cash flow to support students."

According to Mann, who runs the Conjugate Basins, Tectonics and Hydrocarbons Consortium, building a consortium requires a much different skill set than managing a taxpayer-supported, public grant through federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation. Since consortia are partnerships, in-person visits, relationship-building and trust with the sponsoring companies are key to building a successful one.

And instead of submitting routine technical reports, professors who have consortia visit companies, make presentations and meet one-on-one with their partners.

"We rely on companies for their continued funding, so we visit them in person as a way of building trust and transferring information. In meetings, we share what we are finding out, they share their knowledge and we both come away at a higher level of understanding," said Mann. He also transfers information to the company through summer internships or students who become full-time employees following their graduation from UH.

Mann also partners with researchers in the petroleum engineering program at University of Stavanger in Norway that is led by Professor Alejandro Escalona. Escalona completed his Ph.D. and postdoctoral study with the CBTH project at The University of Texas at Austin in 2006 and is now head of the Petroleum Geosciences section at Stavanger.

Find sponsors for your consortium

Building a consortium provides many opportunities for industry partners to get involved. A consortium also provides a flexible, project-based structure and allows partners to come to the table when they have a specific project that needs to be explored.

Other than joining as an official partner to support a project, companies can partner with academia to provide data sets for students to research.

"Data from industry are generally superior to anything that academia can collect because the industry has the resources and infrastructure to develop and support the highest level of subsurface imaging of the deep sedimentary basins that we use for our studies," said Mann.

"Students can work directly with critical industry data sets to accomplish the goals of the project. In return, the data provided increases its value through our interpretations and analysis which benefits the company that provided it."

Get other partners

Another way industry can contribute is through technical support from industry service companies that provide software for the consortium to use in their studies.

"Software helps accomplish complex analyses and provides students a chance to use cutting edge methods in their research projects," said Mann.

This investment transfers back to industry, he adds. As students graduate, they enter industry with strong experience working with the software. They then can promote the use of the software and train others in the company in its applications.

"Software evolves at a fast pace so keeping up requires significant effort," said Mann.

Build credibility with industry

To keep your consortia going, it must bring value to industry. This means providing successful applications to practical problems, such as exploring the subsurface in the search for hydrocarbons, according to Mann.

"We end up on applications – how can we use the science for practical benefits?" said Mann. "The students are exposed to the A-Z science value chain.'"

Performance benchmarked by publications builds credibility with companies, adds Mann, who requires doctoral students to publish three peer-reviewed articles on their dissertation research and master's students to publish one article on their thesis. He also involves students in site visits or Zoom meetings with companies to present the findings of the project. This gives students a chance to investigate summer internship and employment opportunities.

Since the CBTH project moved to UH a decade ago, CBTH-supported students have published 96 peer-reviewed, first-authored articles.

"Theses and dissertations tend to collect dust on shelves in libraries or languish in obscure digital archives, while published papers that are widely accessible online or at sites like Research Gate are at the forefront of the global dialogue of science," said Mann. "I tell the students that their published articles will be their legacy to the pool of human knowledge, so make sure you advance your work to as close to perfection as possible".

Build credibility for your consortium

According to Mann, students in the CBTH also regularly place in the annual poster competitions. Since 2013, they have won 138 awards.

"By the time our students graduate, they are masters of the 'graphical arts' that are based on a variety of software used to maximize the impact of their data and interpretations," said Mann. He said they also attain a high level of confidence, either presenting oral presentations in front of larger groups or poster presentations to smaller groups. The communication skills and confidence they gain serve them well, he said, throughout their careers.

These competitions also help to elevate the status of the UH Earth and Atmospheric Sciences department, which is currently ranked at number 54 in the U.S.A. by U.S. News and World Report.

Along with winning other competitions, Mann said these top performance activities really help establish credibility within the field and that will draw more interest in the consortium.

"Everyone in academia and industry values and respects peer-reviewed articles published in the top geoscience journals. With the electronic age the science dialogue has accelerated, so figuring out where the cutting edge is currently located can be a challenge," said Mann.

The Big Idea?

Building a consortium is a model that increases productivity both as a way to provide financial support and as a way to have a large group working on a single goal and to build a consistent cash flow to support a graduate research program.

Public grant funding tends to be on shorter time scales and that can make the multi-year funding for student projects more challenging, according to Mann. But once established and producing results, a research consortium is a solid model for supporting your students.

Watch this interview with Paul Mann about creating and running a consortium

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This article originally appeared on the University of Houston's The Big Idea. Lindsay Lewis, the author of this piece, is the executive director of communications for the UH Division of Research.
Rice University has again topped a list of the best schools in the country. Photo courtesy of Rice University

Houston school recognized as among the top institutions in the nation

better than all the rest

Houston's Rice University continues to burnish its reputation in higher education.

A ranking released May 5 by QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a British company that specializes in higher education data, puts Rice at No. 23 among the top colleges and universities in the U.S. It's the highest-rated Texas school on the list.

Harvard University appears at No. 1 in the ranking, followed by Stanford University; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Elsewhere in Texas:

  • The University of Texas at Austin ranks 29th.
  • Texas A&M University in College Station ranks 64th.
  • The University of Houston ranks 66th.
  • The University of Texas at Dallas ranks 83rd.

To come up with its ranking, QS Quacquarelli Symonds looked at five factors for more than 350 colleges and universities around the country: employability, learning experience, diversity and internationalization, and research.

Here's how Rice fares in each of those categories:

  • Employability, No. 42.
  • Learning experience, No. 7.
  • Diversity and internationalization, tied for No. 32.
  • Research, No. 33.

Jack Moran, a spokesman for QS Quacquarelli Symonds, says that although the rankings "continue to command record levels of interest, we know that the American higher education sector is wrestling with questions that do not fall within the scope of our … rankings — questions of equity, access, representation, and social justice."

"The QS USA University Rankings have been carefully crafted to shine some independent light on which institutions are doing most to foster the essential relationship between education and social change," Moran adds.

More students soon will be able to take advantage of the top-rated education offered by Rice. In March, the private university announced it would expand the number of undergraduates by 20 percent by the fall of 2025. This would raise undergraduate enrollment to 4,800 and total enrollment to about 9,000.

"Rice's extraordinary applicant pool has grown dramatically despite the challenges posed by the pandemic," President David Leebron says in a news release.

Rice says the number of student applications has climbed 75 percent over the past four years. In 2020, the university received roughly 28 applications for every available slot. For the fall of 2021, almost 30,000 applicants flooded Rice, up 26 percent from the previous year.

Leebron says Rice's previous expansion of enrollment "greatly increased our national and international student applications, enrollment, and visibility. We also dramatically increased diversity on our campus, and we were able to extend the benefits of a Rice education to many more students."
Lisa and Nicky Holdeman are ensuring a bright future of UH med students. Photo courtesy of University of Houston

University of Houston power couple prescribes major gift for college of medicine

funding future doctors

University of Houston medical students and staff will receive a gift that's just what the doctor ordered.

A prestigious and longtime UH power couple has bequeathed two major gifts a major gift to the school's burgeoning College of Medicine. Dr. Nicky and Lisa Holdeman — who together boast more than 45 years at the university — have established an endowed and chair/professorship and a scholarship for medical students, the school announced.

In their will/trust the Holdemans have established, per UH:

  • The Nicky R. and Lisa K. Holdeman Endowed Professorship/Chair, which will support a clinical teaching faculty member responsible for the oversight and strategic direction of the College of Medicine's clinics, as well as enhancing the student and patient experience.
  • The Nicky R. and Lisa K. Holdeman Endowed Scholarship, which will support students in the College of Medicine, which was founded in 2020 on a social mission to improve health and health care in underserved communities in Houston and across Texas.

The Holdemans say that they were inspired by the UH College of Medicine's mission to address a significant statewide primary care physician shortage and how social determinants of health, such as income, housing, food supply and transportation, contribute to health outcomes.

"I have a true admiration for the comprehensive physician, someone comfortable addressing multiple health issues," Nicky Holdeman relays in a statement. "The physicians being trained at the University of Houston will be well prepared to manage most of the patients, with most conditions, most of the time. That's really what primary care medicine is all about."

As previously reported, UH's medical school will welcome its second class of 30 students this summer and will have 480 students at full enrollment, within the decade.

More on the duo, who have been married for 38 years: A UH biography notes that Nicky, physician and professor emeritus at the UH College of Optometry, served as associate dean for clinical education and executive director of the University Eye Institute during his 30 years at the college. He retired in 2019.

Meanwhile, Lisa joined UH in 2006 and serves as vice chancellor for the UH System and vice president for UH marketing and communications. She works directly with UH System Chancellor and UH President Renu Khator and school leadership.

"This gift is especially gratifying because it comes from two dedicated UH leaders whose professional careers have already contributed so much to our University's success," said Renu Khator. "That kind of enlightened commitment on their part sets an admirable example. I know I speak for many when I express our deep appreciation for their generous support of the College of Medicine and the important work it is undertaking in our community."

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.
The telework paradigm may be here to stay in research long after the COVID pandemic tapers off. Graphic by Miguel Tovar/University of Houston

Houston expert: Telework in research might be here to stay

houston voices

How many of the research administrator's duties can be done from home? COVID-19 is showing us emphatically that the answer is many.

There are some aspects that take a little bit of inventive scheduling to make happen, but overall, the telework paradigm may be here to stay in research long after the COVID pandemic tapers off.

Meetings and more meetings

Research professionals know that there are always meetings to attend – with faculty colleagues, research coordinators and institutional review boards. These can be accessed easily over the internet. Back-to-back meetings are much easier to jump on these days.

Sign away

The Society of Research Administrators International blog reminds us that contracts can be sent electronically for signatures: "Sponsors large and small have implemented electronic portals for proposal submissions. Is there a need to be at the office on campus? That is so pre-COVID."

Transportation

Transportation difficulties are all but eliminated in between meetings, and we spend little to no time commuting (as an aside, check out work-from-home discounts for work-from-home car insurance). "More than 30 minutes of daily one-way commuting is associated with increased levels of stress and anxiety," states flexjobs.com. So the telework environment helps to offset that stress. And that doesn't even take into account the environmental impact of fewer cars on the road!

The kids are alright

Childcare. When schools went virtual while some of us worked from home, a crisis was averted. Except for the danger of easy distraction that multi-tasking presented, families often grew closer in the home while working side by side. But essential personnel had a different tale to tell. For instance, Kelly Heath, the director of University of Nebraska – Lincoln Institutional Animal Care Program, said: "Organizing child care is particularly complicated for essential employees and it's added stress to the situation." His team has implemented a three-day consecutive schedule, alternating two teams. This schedule has helped, he said. "Staff are working the same number of hours, but the division provides protection so that if someone on Team A gets sick, Team B has not been exposed."

David Brammer, executive director of Animal Care Operations (ACO) at the University of Houston, developed a similar plan, segregating teams according to geographic location and limiting interaction between the teams. "UH also limited investigators' access to the animal facility until the ACO staff could complete their duties within the facility. The major concern for ACO was to have staff available to care for the animals in the event that a team was either ill or in quarantine due to contract tracing."

Saving money

"People who work from home half time can save around $4,000 per year," states flexjobs.com. "Car maintenance, transportation, parking fees, a professional wardrobe, lunches bought out, and more can all be reduced or eliminated from your spending entirely."

A word on animal care operations

Animal care in the research enterprise poses a significant hurdle. The veterinary care personnel have always been considered "essential." Creative scheduling, like the aforementioned three-day on, three-day off, two-team model has helped to offset the difficulty of having animals fed, watered and cared for.

For University of Nebraska – Lincoln, winter break and blizzards had always required this model to be the plan, but the duration of COVID has simply required this to go on longer than before. The animal care operation, "slowed down its work when possible and delayed taking on any new research projects …Those deemed mission critical or related to addressing COVID-19 got top priority," said a communicator.

The big idea...

Are we better off working at home? The argument can certainly be made that we are. There are aspects that aren't ideal – "Zoom Fatigue" comes to mind – but, overall, telework may be the new normal for many universities.

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This article originally appeared on the University of Houston's The Big Idea. Sarah Hill, the author of this piece, is the communications manager for the UH Division of Research.
From advanced computation to robots, Rice University, the University of Houston, and Houston Methodist are all working on using technology for medical innovation. Graphic via Getty Images

Houston researchers tap into tech to provide new brain-related health care solutions

research roundup

Research, perhaps now more than ever, is crucial to expanding and growing innovation in Houston — and it's happening across the city right under our noses.

In InnovationMap's latest roundup of research news, three Houston institutions are working on brain-related health care solutions thanks to technologies.

University of Houston research team focused on brain injury treatment through computation

Badri Roysam and his team at the University of Houston are working with the National Institute of Health to develop tools to treat concussions and brain injuries. Photo via uh.edu

A University of Houston researcher is tapping into technology to better treat brain injuries and conditions that scientists have not yet figured out treatment for. Badri Roysam, the current chair of electrical and computer engineering at UH and a Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professor, and his team have created a new computational image analysis methods based on deep neural networks.

"We are interested in mapping and profiling unhealthy and drug-treated brain tissue in unprecedented detail to reveal multiple biological processes at once - in context," Roysam says in a UH press release about his latest paper published in Nature Communications. "This requires the ability to record high-resolution images of brain tissue covering a comprehensive panel of molecular biomarkers, over a large spatial extent, e.g., whole-brain slices, and automated ability to generate quantitative readouts of biomarker expression for all cells."

Roysam's system, which was developed at the the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, analyzes the images on UH's supercomputer automatically and can reveal multiple processes at once – the brain injury, effects of the drug being tested and the potential side effects of the drug, per the release.

"Compared to existing screening techniques, using iterative immunostaining and computational analysis, our methods are more flexible, scalable and efficient, enabling multiplex imaging and computational analysis of up to 10 – 100 different biomarkers of interest at the same time using direct or indirect IHC immunostaining protocols," says Roysam in the release.

The open-source toolkit, which was developed thanks to a $3.19 million grant from the National Institute of Health, is also adaptable to other tissues.

"We are efficiently overcoming the fluorescence signal limitations and achieving highly enriched and high-quality source imagery for reliable automated scoring at scale," says Roysam. "Our goal is to accelerate system-level studies of normal and pathological brains, and pre-clinical drug studies by enabling targeted and off-target drug effects to be profiled simultaneously, in context, at the cellular scale."

Houston Methodist and Rice University launch new collaboration to use robotics for clinical solutions

Rice University's Behnaam Aazhang and Marcia O'Malley are two of the people at the helm of the new center along with Houston Methodist's Dr. Gavin Britz. Photos via Rice.edu

Rice University and Houston Methodist have teamed up to create a new partnership and to launch the Center for Translational Neural Prosthetics and Interfaces in order to bring together scientists, clinicians, engineers, and surgeons to solve clinical problems with neurorobotics.

"This will be an accelerator for discovery," says the new center's co-director, Dr. Gavin Britz, chair of the Houston Methodist Department of Neurosurgery, in a news release. "This center will be a human laboratory where all of us — neurosurgeons, neuroengineers, neurobiologists — can work together to solve biomedical problems in the brain and spinal cord. And it's a collaboration that can finally offer some hope and options for the millions of people worldwide who suffer from brain diseases and injuries."

The center will have representatives from both Rice and Houston Methodist and also plans to hire three additional engineers who will have joint appointments at Houston Methodist and Rice.

"The Rice Neuroengineering Initiative was formed with this type of partnership in mind," says center co-director Behnaam Aazhang, Rice's J.S. Abercrombie Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who also directs the neuroengineering initiative. "Several core members, myself included, have existing collaborations with our colleagues at Houston Methodist in the area of neural prosthetics. The creation of the Center for Translational Neural Prosthetics and Interfaces is an exciting development toward achieving our common goals."

The team will have a presence on the Rice campus with 25,000 square feet of space in the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative laboratories and experimental spaces in the university's BioScience Research Collaborative. The space at Houston Methodist is still being developed.

"This partnership is a perfect blend of talent," says Rice's Marcia O'Malley, a core member of both the new center and university initiative. "We will be able to design studies to test the efficacy of inventions and therapies and rely on patients and volunteers who want to help us test our ideas. The possibilities are limitless."
Here's your university research data management checklist. Graphic by Miguel Tovar/University of Houston

Tips for optimizing data management in research, from a UH expert

Houston voices

A data management plan is invaluable to researchers and to their universities. "You should plan at the outset for managing output long-term," said Reid Boehm, research data management librarian at University of Houston Libraries.

At the University of Houston, research data generated while individuals are pursuing research studies as faculty, staff or students of the University of Houston are to be retained by the institution for a period of three years after submission of the final report. That means there is a lot of data to be managed. But researchers are in luck – there are many resources to help navigate these issues.

Take inventory

Is your data…

  • Active (constantly changing) or Inactive (static)
  • Open (public) or Proprietary (for monetary gain)
  • Non-identifiable (no human subjects) or Sensitive (containing personal information)
  • Preservable (to save long term) or To discard in 3 years (not for keeping)
  • Shareable (ready for reuse) or Private (not able to be shared)

The more you understand the kind of data you are generating the easier this step, and the next steps, will be.

Check first

When you are ready to write your plan, the first thing to determine is if your funders or the university have data management plan policy and guidelines. For instance, University of Houston does.

It is also important to distinguish between types of planning documents. For example:

A Data Management Plan (DMP) is a comprehensive, formal document that describes how you will handle your data during the course of your research and at the conclusion of your study or project.

While in some instances, funders or institutions may require a more targeted plan such as a Data Sharing Plan (DSP) that describes how you plan to disseminate your data at the conclusion of a research project.

Consistent questions that DMPs ask include:

  • What is generated?
  • How is it securely handled? and
  • How is it maintained and accessed long-term?

However it's worded, data is critical to every scientific study.

Pre-proposal

Pre-proposal planning resources and support at UH Libraries include a consultation with Boehm. "Each situation is unique and in my role I function as an advocate for researchers to talk through the contextual details, in connection with funder and institutional requirements," stated Boehm. "There are a lot of aspects of data management and dissemination that can be made less complex and more functional long term with a bit of focused planning at the beginning."

When you get started writing, visit the Data Management Plan Tool. This platform helps by providing agency-specific templates and guidance, working with your institutional login and allowing you to submit plans for feedback.

Post-project

Post-project resources and support involve the archiving, curation and the sharing of information. The UH Data Repository archives, preserves and helps to disseminate your data. The repository, the data portion of the institutional repository Cougar ROAR, is open access, free to all UH researchers, provides data sets with a digital object identifier and allows up to 10 GB per project. Most most Federal funding agencies already require this type of documentation (NSF, NASA, USGS and EPA. The NIH will require DMPs by 2023.

Start out strong

Remember, although documentation is due at the beginning of a project/grant proposal, sustained adherence to the plan and related policies is a necessity. We may be distanced socially, but our need to come together around research integrity remains constant. Starting early, getting connected to resources, and sharing as you can through avenues like the data repository are ways to strengthen ourselves and our work.

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This article originally appeared on the University of Houston's The Big Idea. Sarah Hill, the author of this piece, is the communications manager for the UH Division of Research.
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Nearly half of Houston workers complain of serious burnout, says new report

working hard

Local workers who're especially dreading that commute or cracking open the laptop in the morning aren't alone. A new study reveals that nearly half of Houston laborers are more burned out on the job.

Some 49 percent of Bayou City residents report to be burned out at work, according to employment industry website Robert Half. That's significantly higher than last year, when only 37 percent reported burnout in a similar poll.

Meanwhile, more than one in four Houston workers (28 percent) say that they will not unplug from work when taking time off this summer.

Not surprisingly, American workers are ready for a vacation. Per a press release, the research also reveals:

  • One in four workers lost or gave up paid time off in 2020
  • One in three plans to take more than three weeks of vacation time this year

Elsewhere in Texas, the burnout is real. In Dallas, 50 percent of workers report serious burnout. More than a quarter — 26 percent — of Dallasites fear they won't disconnect from the office during summer vacation.

In fun-filled Austin, 45 percent of the workforce complain of burnout. Some 32 percent of Austinites feel they can unplug from work during the summer.

Fortunately for us, the most burned-out city in the U.S. isn't in the Lone Star State. That dubious title goes to the poor city of Charlotte, North Carolina, where 55 percent of laborers are truly worn out.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Houston small biz tech platform raises $21M series B

money moves

A tech company focused on supporting and growing startups and small businesses has reached its own next big growth milestone this week.

Machine learning-enabled small business support company Hello Alice, founded in Houston with a large presence in California, has closed its $21 million series B raise led by Virginia-based QED Investors with participation from new investors including Backstage Capital, Green Book Ventures, Harbert Growth Partners, and How Women Invest.

The raise comes at a pivotal time for the company, which worked hard during the pandemic to support struggling business and now aims to support entrepreneurs of all backgrounds as the world re-emerges out of the COVID-19 era. The fresh funds, according to a press release, will be used to refine the predictive capabilities on its platform, launch a mobile application, and more.

"These investments signal that despite the recent challenges small business owners have faced, there is an economic tidal wave that will revitalize Main Street, led by the entrepreneurs we serve," says Elizabeth Gore, co-founder and president of Hello Alice, in the release.

Since April 2020, Hello Alice has granted over $20 million in emergency funds and resources for small business owners affected by the pandemic. According to the release, the largest percentage of those grants went to "New Majority owners," especially people of color and women. Additionally, the company has reportedly experienced 1,100 percent growth and has expanded to support 500,000 small business owners weekly, with an increased revenue of more than 600 percent through its SaaS platform.

"We are thrilled to have a cap table as diverse as the business owners we serve," says Carolyn Rodz, co-founder and CEO of Hello Alice, in the release. "Our investors are leaders from the Black, Hispanic, LGBTQ+, Women, and US Veteran communities. As a Latina founder and fellow small business owner, I want to ensure that as our company grows, we are fueling future diversity in capital and breaking through ceilings for the benefit of our community."

According to a recent report Hello Alice produced in partnership with GGV Capital, now is the time to support small businesses. The report found that 83 percent of owners surveyed (which included 97,739 founders operating in all 50 states) believe their business will perform better in 2021 than in 2020. Most of the founders — 93 percent — plan to hire this year compared to the almost half — 45 percent — that laid off employees in 2020. Additionally, founders have an increased focus on tech — 75 percent said they are going to spend more on tech this year compared to last.

"Small business owners are the backbone of the U.S. economy, but many fail before they've had an opportunity to meaningfully serve the community in which they're based," says Frank Rotman, QED Investors Founding Partner, in the release. "Access to both capital and business expertise remain the biggest obstacles for SMBs, challenges heightened for women- and minority-owned businesses.

"Traditionally, corporations and government grants want to engage and support, but there hasn't been a source of truth on who can qualify for their diversity grants, funds and programs," he continues. "Hello Alice solves this problem, building tools that empower the new majority and enabling corporations and governments to support SMBs. Founders Carolyn and Elizabeth and the entire Hello Alice team are having a real, tangible impact on the ecosystem. We are incredibly excited to help them help others."

3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to two local innovators, as well as one honorary Houstonian, across industries — energy, manufacturing, and more — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Juliana Garaizar, head of Greentown Houston and vice president of Greentown Labs

Juliana Garaizar is transitioning her role at Greentown Houston. Courtesy photo

Juliana Garaizar has a new role within Greentown Labs. She's lead the local team as launch director, and now is taking a new role now that Greentown Houston has opened its doors. Garaizar recently discussed with InnovationMap why now is the perfect time for Greentown to premiere in Houston.

"I think that if Greentown had happened one year before or even one year later, it wouldn't be the right time. I really believe that our main partners are transitioning themselves — Shell, Chevron, and many others are announcing how they are transitioning," she says. "And now they look at Greentown as an execution partner more than anything. Before, it was a nice initiative for them to get involved in. Now, they are really thinking about us much more strategically." Click here to read more.

Misha Govshteyn, CEO of MacroFab

Misha Govshteyn joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss the evolving electronics manufacturing industry. Photo courtesy of MacroFab

Electronics manufacturer and MacroFab, run by CEO Misha Govshteyn, much like the rest of the business world, was not immune to the effects of the pandemic. But as some business returned last summer, Govshteyn says MacroFab bounced back in a big way.

"In a lot of ways, the concepts we've been talking about actually crystalized during the pandemic. For a lot of people, it was theoretically that supply chain resiliency is important," Govshteyn says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "Single sourcing from a country halfway around the world might not be the best solution. ... When you have all your eggs in one basket, sooner or later you're going to have a break in your supply chain. And we've seen nothing but breaks in supply chains for the last five years." Click here to read more.

Kerri Smith, interim executive director of the Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator

A new clean energy accelerator has announced its first cohort. Photo via rice.edu

The Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator, a 12-week program that will prepare startups to grow their business, connect them with strategic partners and mentors, launch pilots, and fundraise, has named its inaugural cohort.

"We were impressed with the quality, potential and range of clean energy solutions being commercialized by our applicant pool and took great care in assessing their potential as well as our ability to meet their identified needs," says Kerri Smith, the accelerator's interim executive director. "The selection process was very competitive. We had a difficult time paring down the applications but are looking forward to working with our first class of 12." Click here to read more.

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