Innovation Council Hosts Inaugural Panel Event With Cullen Support

The University of Houston Innovation Council capitalized on Houston’s thriving entrepreneurial spirit in a first-of-its-kind event, bringing together entrepreneurs from around the region to share their success stories while touching on topics surrounding innovation, AI, biotechnology, small business, education and more.

The inaugural panel, “The Leap: Houston Innovation Panel,” drew more than 110 attendees on Oct. 8 at Student Center South, the majority of whom (82 percent) were students from six of UH’s Colleges: C. T. Bauer College of Business, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Katherine G. McGovern College of the Arts, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, and Conrad N. Hilton College of Global Hospitality Leadership. Alex Landon, the director of the Honors Engineering Program, moderated the panel.

“The panel showcased the incredible range of ideas and impact emerging from UH and across Houston — from biotech to education and workforce tech,” Landon said. “What united all our entrepreneurs was a shared courage to leap from idea to action and the resilience to keep going through challenges.”

The free event was put on by the Innovation Council, a conglomeration of UH faculty and students from various colleges with a shared interest in innovation formed by UH’s Division of Energy and Innovation. 

Panelists included Irene Greaves, founder and CEO of Lovescaping; David Malcotti Sanchez, lead mechanical engineer at CarbonX Solutions; Rushi Patel, COO at Homebase; and, Navin Varadarajan, co-founder of Cell Chorus and M.D. Anderson Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UH.

“The UH Innovation Council intentionally targeted the student population for this event, and many attendees represented a wide range of colleges,” said Jokubas Ziburkus, associate professor at the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and Innovation Council chair. “The panelists were invited to showcase diverse technical skills, backgrounds and levels of entrepreneurial experience.”

While the panel explored a range of topics, one of the hot talking points focused on AI and its ever-growing place in the world.

“I think it has a role to play in society, whether you like it or not,” Varadarajan said. “There’s going to be two kinds of people: those who will say, ‘I love AI’ and people who are going to be left behind because they didn’t bother catching up with what AI can do.”

Malcotti Sanchez, a senior engineering student at UH, echoed that sentiment and shared his personal experience with AI in the workplace as a summer intern at Microsoft.

“There was a lot of buzz about AI and whether it’s going to take our jobs,” he said. “What I experienced is AI is not necessarily going to take away your job — at least for now — but it’s going to increase your productivity 10-fold. Rather than think about the details so much, you can focus on the bigger picture.”

Another major talking point was about entrepreneurship and what it takes to be successful, with a warning from Patel that entrepreneurs will make mistakes, but the goal is to learn from them and improve.

“You will get beat down and you will get back up because you’re an entrepreneur,” Patel said. “You have grit and perseverance in a way that others may not. It’s in your DNA.”

This panel was just one step in the Innovation Council’s goal to foster a campus-wide innovation ecosystem that unites university stakeholders, alumni, investors, corporate partners and the Houston community.

Landon expects more university-wide innovation events down the pipeline as the council presses forward with its mission to support UH faculty, students, staff and friends in making their ideas, inventions and businesses a reality.

“There are many amazing innovation events happening each week, but many of them are centered on specific industries or within a college or two,” Landon said. “I’m excited to celebrate innovation across the board at UH and across our city.”