Here are 3 Houston innovators to know right now

Innovators to Know

Khaliah Guillory, founder of Nap Bar, says she hopes to expand to 30 locations in three years. Photo courtesy Khaliah Guillory

Editor's note: These Houston innovators are making big strides in the fields of neurotechnology, neurodevelopmental diagnosis, and even improving the way we rest and recharge.

For our latest roundup of Innovators to Know, we meet a researcher who is working with teams in Houston and abroad to develop an innovative brain implant; a professor who has created an AI approach to diagnosis; and a local entrepreneur whose brand is poised for major expansion in the coming years.

Jacob Robinson, CEO of Motif Neurotech

Houston startup Motif Neurotech has been selected by the United Kingdom's Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) to participate in its inaugural Precision Neurotechnologies program. The program aims to develop advanced brain-interfacing technologies for cognitive and psychiatric conditions. Three Rice labs will collaborate with Motif Neurotech to develop Brain Mesh, which is a distributed network of minimally invasive implants that can stimulate neural circuits and stream neural data in real time. The project has been awarded approximately $5.9 million.

Motif Neurotech was spun out of the Rice lab of Jacob Robinson, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and bioengineering and CEO of Motif Neurotech.

Robinson will lead the system and network integration and encapsulation efforts for Mesh Points implants. According to Rice, these implants, about the size of a grain of rice, will track and modulate brain states and be embedded in the skull through relatively low-risk surgery. Learn more.

Dr. Ryan S. Dhindsa, Dhindsa Lab

Dr. Ryan S. Dhindsa, assistant professor of pathology and immunology at Baylor and principal investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital, and his team have developed an artificial intelligence-based approach that will help doctors to identify genes tied to neurodevelopmental disorders. Their research was recently published the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Dhindsa Lab uses “human genomics, human stem cell models, and computational biology to advance precision medicine.” The diagnoses that stem from the new computational tool could include specific types of autism spectrum disorder, epilepsy and developmental delay, disorders that often don’t come with a genetic diagnosis.

“Although researchers have made major strides identifying different genes associated with neurodevelopmental disorders, many patients with these conditions still do not receive a genetic diagnosis, indicating that there are many more genes waiting to be discovered,” Dhindsa says. Learn more.

Khaliah Guillory, Founder of Nap Bar

From nap research to diversity and inclusion, this entrepreneur is making Houston workers more productiveFrom opening Nap Bar and consulting corporations on diversity and inclusion to serving the city as an LGBT adviser, Khaliah Guillory is focused on productivity. Courtesy of Khaliah Guillory

Khalia Guillory launched her white-glove, eco-friendly rest sanctuary business, Nap Bar, in Houston in 2019 to offer a unique rest experience with artificial intelligence integration for working professionals, entrepreneurs and travelers who needed a place to rest, recharge and rejuvenate.

Now she is ready to take it to the next level, with a pivot to VR and plans to expand to 30 locations in three years.

Guillory says she’s now looking to scale the business by partnering with like-minded investors with experience in the wellness space. She envisions locations at national and international airports, which she says offer ripe scenarios for patrons needing to recharge. Additionally, Guillory wants to build on her initial partnership with UT Health by going onsite to curate rest experiences for patients, caregivers, faculty, staff, nurses and doctors. Colleges also offer an opportunity for growth. Learn more.

Oculus Go is enabling users to their canceled travels with a virtual getaway. Image courtesy of Oculus Go

Virtual reality app developed in Houston allows users to escape to far away lands

there's an app for that

While rising coronavirus cases in the area have canceled so many summer vacations, not all hope of sightseeing this summer is lost. A Houston entrepreneur has created a virtual alternative.

Houston-area industrial design startup, Armstrong Innovations launched two Oculus Go app games, aptly named 'Escape'. The VR app was designed with relaxation and meditation in mind but has doubled as a new way to relax and sightsee without leaving your home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The sights and sounds of our new app assist with mindfulness and meditation," says CEO and founder Derek Armstrong. "It's about focusing on the sights and sounds, especially with the virus growing. It's a quick getaway without having to physically go anywhere."

The project began a year ago and was completed in March — right at the start of stay-at-home orders that paralyzed everyday life before launching this month. The company's new array of Occulus Go experiences aims at easing the mind and spirits, but with the rise of coronavirus 'Escape' can also serve to calm frayed nerves.

The app is based on popular view master toys and stereoscopes from the 1800s that are reminiscent of exploration tools used over the years. There are two different experiences to choose from one named 'Escape: Roma' for its old-world inspired poolside lounge and another named 'Escape: Utopia', which brings outer space to life in front of an Oculus user's eyes.

"The app has already gotten a lot of traction in places where people are not able to go out in the world," says Armstrong. "It's so easy just to pop on your Oculus headset, open the app, and zone out or relax for a few minutes."

The local industrial design startup was founded in 2018, and it has already released a few music packs with tracks ranging from horror titles to 8-bit retro remakes for Unreal Engine projects, an advanced real-time 3D creation tool that serves as a game engine for creators to deliver interactive experiences. The music packs are a collection of audio assets made in collaboration with Epic Games.

"Our company is focused on creating engaging gamified experiences," says Armstrong. "The inspiration for our packs and now our new app came from my interest in treating PTSD and how virtual reality can help ease the symptoms of anxiety in some cases."

Armstrong, a Houston native, describes himself as a "maker of stuff," with previous experience in music production and a passion for design. According to him, his hometown is the best place to be.

"Houston really has everything you need, when it comes to new innovations and technology," says Armstrong. "I would prefer to have my business rooted in Houston rather than moving to a design startup hotspot."

Armstrong Innovations hopes to grow into new areas of the industrial design world, especially in military-driven technologies and other video game opportunities in the next year or so. Product keys for 'Escape' can be purchased online now, available worldwide for maximum relaxation.


Derek Armstrong, a Houston native, founded his design company, Armstrong Innovations. Photo courtesy of Oculus Go

The majority of McCarthy Building Companies' projects now include some sort of virtual or augmented reality technology. Courtesy of McCarthy Building Companies

Houston-area construction team utilizes technology to solve problems

Reality real estate

In recent years, the construction industry has begun embraced advancements in reality technology like virtual reality and augmented reality. While it has yet to reach critical mass in the industry, several contracting companies in the Houston region like McCarthy Building Companies are embracing the technology and blazing the trail for the construction industry.

Chris Patton, virtual design and construction manager for McCarthy's southern region, says many construction companies are consistently looking for ways to improve processes and procedures through reality technology.

"We really saw the potential and use cases for [VR] really early on, and it was really just a matter of the hardware and the software catching up to being something usable, consumable, deployable and cost effective on our projects," Patton says. "We were sitting there waiting for it and ready to go when it was."

Patton says these visualization tools have changed the way contractors display projects and have helped the partners on these projects — such as the design team, building owner and subcontractors — make better informed decisions earlier, more quickly and sometimes at a cheaper price point.

Before AR and VR technology entered the construction industry, companies either had to work with two-dimensional construction drawings or build very expensive, three-dimensional models, or mock ups, of construction sites that allowed clients to physically walk through a building space to interact with its features. Patton says the entire mock-up building process used to cost roughly $1 million — depending on the project size.

However, now this costly and time-consuming process is a thing of the past, as construction companies have found a way to utilize AR and VR technology to bring clients into a computer-generated environment. By putting on an AR or VR helmet, clients can immerse themselves and engage in a virtual environment that shows them all of the project's details and allows them to move about a virtual construction site the same way they would in a 3D model.

McCarthy's Houston division began utilizing reality technology in early 2015, with some of its other markets integrating the technology into their practices in late 2014. Since then, the company's use of AR and VR technology has grown exponentially, Patton says.

"When we first started evaluating and looking at virtual reality and augmented reality, [we] might have [used it on] one or two projects a year, and that was probably three years ago," Patton says. "Today, I'd say almost 60-75 percent of our projects—at some point in design or construction — utilize virtual reality or augmented reality or a combination of both."

Although McCarthy has been around since 1864, the general contracting company made its Texas debut in Dallas in 1981. Since then McCarthy expanded to create a Houston office in 2011, building a portfolio of renowned Houston clients such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Holocaust Museum Houston, Texas Children's Hospital as well as the recent completion of Houston ISD's Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

A notable project McCarthy's Houston Division took on was phase one the MFAH's master plan that included building The Glassell School of Art. The company also continues its work on phase two, which includes new developments for the MFAH for which McCarthy's virtual design and construction group created VR and AR models for the museum.

By using software like HoloLive and Fuzor for AR technology and Fuzor for VR technology, McCarthy's VDC group can visualize and combine digital creations with the real world, Patton says. With the growing number of projects utilizing the technology, Patton says McCarthy has invested greatly in personnel who will help grow the VDC group and continue to look for advancements in the construction industry.

"Some of the folks that we have those [VDC] positions in our company, some of them come from construction technology backgrounds and construction management backgrounds but others come from graphical design and have like a gaming background, some come from architectural backgrounds," Patton says. "[Reality technology] really kind of opened the door to a new opportunity for people to get engaged with the construction industry that we hadn't seen in the past."

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."

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Greentown Labs names Lawson Gow as its new Houston leader

head of hou

Greentown Labs has named Lawson Gow as its Head of Houston.

Gow is the founder of The Cannon, a coworking space with seven locations in the Houston area, with additional partner spaces. He also recently served as managing partner at Houston-based investment and advisory firm Helium Capital. Gow is the son of David Gow, founder of Energy Capital's parent company, Gow Media.

According to Greentown, Gow will "enhance the founder experience, cultivate strategic partnerships, and accelerate climatetech solutions" in his new role.

“I couldn’t be more excited to join Greentown at this critical moment for the energy transition,” Gow said in a news release. “Greentown has a fantastic track record of supporting entrepreneurs in Houston, Boston, and beyond, and I am eager to keep advancing our mission in the energy transition capital of the world.”

Gow has also held analyst, strategy and advising roles since graduating from Rice University.

“We are thrilled to welcome Lawson to our leadership team,” Georgina Campbell Flatter, CEO of Greentown Labs, added in the release. “Lawson has spent his career building community and championing entrepreneurs, and we look forward to him deepening Greentown’s support of climate and energy startups as our Head of Houston.”

Gow is the latest addition to a series of new hires at Greentown Labs following a leadership shakeup.

Flatter was named as the organization's new CEO in February, replacing Kevin Dutt, Greentown’s interim CEO, who replaced Kevin Knobloch after he announced that he would step down in July 2024 after less than a year in the role.

Greentown also named Naheed Malik its new CFO in January.

Timmeko Moore Love was named the first Houston general manager and senior vice president of Greentown Labs. According to LinkedIn, she left the role in January.

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

Rice team keeps CO2-to-fuel devices running 50 times longer in new study

Bubbling Up

In a new study published in the journal Science, a team of Rice University researchers shared findings on how acid bubbles can improve the stability of electrochemical devices that convert carbon dioxide into useful fuels and chemicals.

The team led by Rice associate professor Hoatian Wang addressed an issue in the performance and stability of CO2 reduction systems. The gas flow channels in the systems often clog due to salt buildup, reducing efficiency and causing the devices to fail prematurely after about 80 hours of operation.

“Salt precipitation blocks CO2 transport and floods the gas diffusion electrode, which leads to performance failure,” Wang said in a news release. “This typically happens within a few hundred hours, which is far from commercial viability.”

By using an acid-humidified CO2 technique, the team was able to extend the operational life of a CO2 reduction system more than 50-fold, demonstrating more than 4,500 hours of stable operation in a scaled-up reactor.

The Rice team made a simple swap with a significant impact. Instead of using water to humidify the CO2 gas input into the reactor, the team bubbled the gas through an acid solution such as hydrochloric, formic or acetic acid. This process made more soluble salt formations that did not crystallize or block the channels.

The process has major implications for an emerging green technology known as electrochemical CO2 reduction, or CO2RR, that transforms climate-warming CO2 into products like carbon monoxide, ethylene, or alcohols. The products can be further refined into fuels or feedstocks.

“Using the traditional method of water-humidified CO2 could lead to salt formation in the cathode gas flow channels,” Shaoyun Hao, postdoctoral research associate in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice and co-first author, explained in the news release. “We hypothesized — and confirmed — that acid vapor could dissolve the salt and convert the low solubility KHCO3 into salt with higher solubility, thus shifting the solubility balance just enough to avoid clogging without affecting catalyst performance.”

The Rice team believes the work can lead to more scalable CO2 electrolyzers, which is vital if the technology is to be deployed at industrial scales as part of carbon capture and utilization strategies. Since the approach itself is relatively simple, it could lead to a more cost-effective and efficient solution. It also worked well with multiple catalyst types, including zinc oxide, copper oxide and bismuth oxide, which are allo used to target different CO2RR products.

“Our method addresses a long-standing obstacle with a low-cost, easily implementable solution,” Ahmad Elgazzar, co-first author and graduate student in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice, added in the release. “It’s a step toward making carbon utilization technologies more commercially viable and more sustainable.”

A team led by Wang and in collaboration with researchers from the University of Houston also recently shared findings on salt precipitation buildup and CO2RR in a recent edition of the journal Nature Energy.

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

Houston foundation grants $27M to support Texas chemistry research

fresh funding

Houston-based The Welch Foundation has doled out $27 million in its latest round of grants for chemical research, equipment and postdoctoral fellowships.

According to a June announcement, $25.5 million was allocated for the foundation's longstanding research grants, which provide $100,000 per year in funding for three years to full-time, regular tenure or tenure-track faculty members in Texas. The foundation made 85 grants to faculty at 16 Texas institutions for 2025, including:

  • Michael I. Jacobs, assistant professor in the chemistry and biochemistry department at Texas State University, who is investigating the structure and thermodynamics of intrinsically disordered proteins, which could "reveal clues about how life began," according to the foundation.
  • Kendra K. Frederick, assistant professor in the biophysics department at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who is studying a protein linked to Parkinson’s disease.
  • Jennifer S. Brodbelt, professor in chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin, who is testing a theory called full replica symmetry breaking (fullRSB) on glass-like materials, which has implications for complex systems in physics, chemistry and biology.

Additional funding will be allocated to the Welch Postdoctoral Fellows of the Life Sciences Research Foundation. The program provides three-year fellowships to recent PhD graduates to support clinical research careers in Texas. Two fellows from Rice University and Baylor University will receive $100,000 annually for three years.

The Welch Foundation also issued $975,000 through its equipment grant program to 13 institutions to help them develop "richer laboratory experience(s)." The universities matched funds of $352,346.

Since 1954, the Welch Foundation has contributed over $1.1 billion for Texas-nurtured advancements in chemistry through research grants, endowed chairs and other chemistry-related ventures. Last year, the foundation granted more than $40.5 million in academic research grants, equipment grants and fellowships.

“Through funding basic chemical research, we are actively investing in the future of humankind,” Adam Kuspa, president of The Welch Foundation, said the news release. “We are proud to support so many talented researchers across Texas and continue to be inspired by the important work they complete every day.”

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