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Houston school to host regional DOE competition, calls for applications

Calling all students and faculty interested in energy tech. Photo via Getty Images

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship will host the regional qualifier for a Department of Energy-backed student competition, and the application deadline to participate is coming up.

The DOE's EnergyTech University Prize, or EnergyTech UP, a virtual regional qualifier hosted by the Rice Alliance will take place in February, and applications for students and faculty are now open. A $400,000 collegiate competition, the program challenges student teams to develop a business plan based off of National Laboratory-developed or other emerging energy technology.

"Understanding that energy is often inherently local, competitor teams first present at their designated regional events in February, where regional finalists are identified," reads an email from Rice. "Finalists are provided exclusive mentorship to help students refine their ideas throughout February and March."

If selected as a finalist, the student teams will pitch at Zpryme’s 2024 Energy Thought Summit in Austin, Texas on April 15, 2024.

The application deadline is February 1 for students. To qualify, the student teams must:

  • Be comprised of university or college students
  • Have at least two students on the team (can be undergraduate students, graduate students, or a mix)
  • Create a business plan based on a national lab technology or technology from their university

This year there's a new track for faculty that has a prize of $100,000 on the line. Faculty have until January 5 to apply.

The DOE is hosting an informative webinar on December 5 for those interested in learning more.

The 2023 competition had one winning Houston-based team from Prairie View A&M University and University of Houston. The team, entitled "Revolutionizing Hydrogen with Ceramic Membranes" won the National Lab Technology IP Licensing Bonus Prize.

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A View From HETI

ExxonMobil is on Fortune's first-ever AIQ ranking. Getty Images

Two Houston-area energy leaders appear on Fortune’s inaugural list of the top adopters of AI among Fortune 500 companies.

They are:

  • No. 7 energy company ExxonMobil, based in Spring
  • No. 47 energy company Chevron, based in Houston

They are joined by Spring-based tech company Hewlett Packard Enterprise, No. `9.

All three companies have taken a big dive into the AI pool.

In 2024, ExxonMobil’s executive chairman and CEO, Darren Woods, explained that AI would play a key role in achieving a $15 billion reduction in operating costs by 2027.

“There is a concerted effort to make sure that we're really working hard to apply that new technology to the opportunity set within the company to drive effectiveness and efficiency,” Woods told Wall Street analysts.

At Chevron, AI tools are being used to quickly analyze data and extract insights from it, according to tech news website VentureBeat. Also, Chevron employs advanced AI systems known as large language models (LLMs) to create engineering standards, specifications and safety alerts. AI is even being put to work in Chevron’s exploration initiatives.

Bill Braun, Chevron’s chief information officer, said at a VentureBeat-sponsored event in 2024 that AI-savvy data scientists, or “digital scholars,” are always embedded within workplace teams “to act as a catalyst for working differently.”

The Fortune AIQ 50 ranking is based on ServiceNow’s Enterprise AI Maturity Index, an annual measurement of how prepared organizations are to adopt and scale AI. To evaluate how Fortune 500 companies are rolling out AI and how much they value AI investments, Fortune teamed up with Enterprise Technology Research. The results went into computing an AIQ score for each company.

At the top of the ranking is Alphabet (owner of Google and YouTube), followed by Visa, JPMorgan Chase, Nvidia and Mastercard. Aside from ExxonMobil, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Chevron, two other Texas companies made the list: Arlington-based homebuilder D.R. Horton (No. 29) and Austin-based software company Oracle (No. 37).

“The Fortune AIQ 50 demonstrates how companies across industry sectors are beginning to find real value from the deployment of AI technology,” Jeremy Kahn, Fortune’s AI editor, said in a news release. “Clearly, some sectors, such as tech and finance, are pulling ahead of others, but even in so-called 'old economy' industries like mining and transport, there are a few companies that are pulling away from their peers in the successful use of AI.

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This article originally appeared on InnovationMap.com.

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