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University of Houston names first group of Chevron-backed fellows

meet the chosen ones

The PhD and doctoral students will each receive a one-year $12,000 fellowship, along with mentoring from experts at UH and Chevron. Photo via UH.edu

The University of Houston has named eight graduate students to its first-ever cohort of UH-Chevron Energy Graduate Fellows.

The PhD and doctoral students will each receive a one-year $12,000 fellowship, along with mentoring from experts at UH and Chevron. Their work focuses on energy-related research in fields ranging from public policy to geophysics and math. The fellowship is funded by Chevron.

“The UH-Chevron Energy Fellowship program is an exciting opportunity for our graduate students to research the many critical areas that impact the energy industry, our communities and our global competitiveness,” Ramanan Krishnamoortil UH's Vice President for Energy and Innovation says in a statement.

“Today’s students not only recognize the importance of energy, but they are actively driving the push for affordable, reliable, sustainable and secure energy and making choices that clearly indicate that they are meaningfully contributing to the change,” he continues.

“We love that Chevron is sponsoring this group of fellows because it’s a fantastic way for us to get involved with the students who are working on some of the biggest problems we’ll face in society,” Chevron Technology Ventures President Jim Gable adds.

The 2023 UH-Chevron Energy Graduate Fellows are:

Kripa Adhikari, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Cullen College of Engineering. Her work focuses on thermal regulation in enhanced geothermal systems. She currently works under the mentorship of Professor Kalyana Babu Nakshatrala and previously worked as a civil engineer with the Nepal Reconstruction Authority.

Aparajita Datta, a researcher at UH Energy and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science. Her work focuses on the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), a redistributive welfare policy designed to help households pay their energy bills. She holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies in India, and master’s degrees in energy management and public policy from UH. She also recently worked on a paper for UH about transportation emissions.

Chirag Goel, a Ph.D. student in materials science and engineering at UH. His work focuses on using High Temperature Superconductors (HTS) to optimize manufacturing processes, which he says can help achieve carbon-free economies by 2050. The work has uses in renewable energy generation, electric power transmission and advanced scientific applications.

Meghana Idamakanti, a third-year Ph.D. student in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Her work focuses on using electrically heated steam methane for cleaner hydrogen production. She received her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in India in 2020 and previously worked as a process engineering intern at Glochem Industries in India.

Erin Picton, an environmental engineering Ph.D. student in the Shaffer Lab at UH. Her work focuses on ways to increase the sustainability of lithium processing and reducing wasted water and energy. “I love the idea of taking waste and turning it into value,” she said in a statement. She has previously worked in collaboration with MIT and Greentown Labs, as chief sustainability officer of a Houston-based desalination startup; and as a visiting graduate researcher at Argonne National Lab and at INSA in Lyon, France.

Mohamad Sarhan, a Ph.D. student and a teaching assistant in the Department of Petroleum Engineering. His work focuses on seasonal hydrogen storage and the stability of storage candidates during hydrogen cycling. He holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in petroleum engineering from Cairo University

Swapnil Sharma, a Ph.D. student in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. His work has been funded by the Department of Energy and focuses on thermal modeling of large-scale liquid hydrogen storage tanks. He works with Professor Vemuri Balakotaiah. He holds bachelor's and master’s degrees in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). He also developed one of the world’s highest fiber-count optical fiber cables while working in India and founded CovRelief, which helped millions of Indians find resources about hospital beds, oxygen suppliers and more during the pandemic.

Larkin Spires, who's working on her doctoral research in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Her work focuses on a semi-empirical Brown and Korringa model for fluid substitution and the ties between geophysics and mathematics. She works under Professor John Castagna and holds a bachelor’s degree in math from Louisiana State University and a master’s degree in geophysics from UH.

Earlier this month Evolve Houston also announced its first-ever cohort of 13 microgrant recipients, whose work aims to make EVs and charging infrastructure more accessible in some of the city's more underserved neighborhoods.

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Energy expert reviews Texas' big strides in winter grid resilience

guest column

Many Houstonians were holding their breath during the hard freezes that occurred in late January. While Winter Storm Uri was five years ago, the massive blackouts remain a fresh memory.

During that storm, 4.5 million Texans lost power, the state suffered over $80 billion in economic losses, and more than 200 people lost their lives.

During the most recent freeze events, Texas did not experience large-scale blackouts across the state like those in 2021. Regional power outages occurred due to infrastructure issues, including ice on trees and power lines. Since Uri, we have not seen the same sustained weather conditions to test the grid, but there have been significant improvements.

What Has Changed Since Uri

The ERCOT grid has changed significantly since the storm in 2021:

  1. Senate Bill 3 required generators to winterize their equipment, treated the natural gas supply chain as critical infrastructure, and imposed fines of up to $1 million for falling short. More than 300 power units have already been weatherized, and regulators have issued clearer standards to help keep the grid running during extreme cold.
  2. There has been significant progress with monitoring the grid and preparing for emergencies. ERCOT has improved in spotting problems before they turn into outages. Operators now have stronger real-time visibility into generator performance and fuel supplies, improved coordination with natural gas providers, and more advanced forecasting tools that help predict energy availability.
  3. The Texas Energy Fund authorized more than $10 billion for reliability projects across the state. The funds support four programs that aim to increase energy generation and dispatch capacity during periods of grid strain.

Signs of Progress

The grid's performance from 2022 to 2026 shows measurable improvements in how the system handles extreme cold.

  • ERCOT has implemented conservation alerts to help reduce grid load and prevent major blackouts.
  • Operators monitor the reserve margin, essentially the buffer between supply and demand. When that cushion holds, the grid has more flexibility to keep power flowing.
  • Stronger coordination between generators, transmission operators and utilities is also improving overall system resilience.

Additionally, Texas has built one of the largest smart-meter networks in the country, enabling better predictive analysis of electricity demand and usage. These smart meters have been installed in 90% of Texas residential homes, providing a much more accurate picture of energy consumption.

Finally, energy companies are helping customers understand how small changes in usage can ease grid strain. Individually, those adjustments may seem minor, but across millions of homes, they can meaningfully lower demand and help reduce the risk of outages.

Remaining Vulnerabilities and Possible Risks

Despite the progress, Grid Strategies assigned the Texas power grid a D-minus rating this year. A major factor in the rating is Texas’s lack of connections to neighboring power grids. While the state earned a B for legislative engagement, delayed transmission projects contributed to a lower C-minus outcome score.

While the grid has become more reliable since 2021, several threats remain that could impede its continued progress.

  • Population growth remains one of the biggest tests for Texas grid reliability. The state is expected to add roughly 15 million residents over the next three decades.
  • Data centers, industrial expansion, and corporate relocations continue to drive electricity demand higher. Houston sits at the center of that growth, making it a key region to watch to see whether Texas can keep pace with rising energy needs.
  • Increased weather volatility in Texas will make demand predictions even more challenging. Currently, Texas supplies almost 45% of its energy needs with natural gas. Natural gas production and extraction are particularly susceptible to cold weather and freezing conditions.

What “No Blackouts” Really Means for Texans

A stronger grid comes with a price tag. Meeting Texas’s growing demand requires major investments in generation, transmission, and emergency preparedness, and those costs ultimately flow to consumers through higher electric bills.

At the same time, Texans are becoming more proactive about managing energy use and protecting against outages, with more homeowners investing in generators, battery storage, and solar as part of long-term energy planning.

Final Thoughts

As lawmakers continue to debate how to recover grid investments, consumers will ultimately bear part of the cost. The challenge moving forward is improving reliability while keeping electricity affordable for Texans.

Texas continues to expand renewable generation to diversify the power mix, and battery storage is quickly becoming a key reliability tool because it can respond almost instantly to demand spikes. At the same time, advanced forecasting technology is helping operators better anticipate grid stress.

The Texas energy market is evolving fast, driven by population growth and rising electricity demand. Lawmakers, regulators, and grid operators will need to stay aligned to keep reliability moving in the right direction, while consumers will play a bigger role in managing how and when they use electricity.

So, is Texas better prepared for winter today? In many ways, yes. But the grid is still vulnerable to extreme weather and rapid demand growth. Maintaining reliability will require continued investment, planning, and coordination to keep the lights on across the state.

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Sam Luna is director at BKV Energy, where he oversees brand and go-to-market strategy, customer experience, marketing execution, and more.

Houston company raises $100M Series D to scale industrial decarbonization tech

fresh funding

Houston-based Utility Global has raised $100 million in an ongoing Series D round to globally deploy its decarbonization technology at an industrial scale.

The round was led by Ara Partners and APG Asset, according to a news release. Utility plans to use the funding to expand manufacturing, grow its teams and support its commercial developments and partnerships.

“This financing marks a critical step in Utility’s transition from a proven technology to full-scale global commercial execution,” Parker Meeks, CEO and president of Utility Global, said in the release. “Industrial customers are no longer looking for pilots or promises; they need deployable solutions that work within existing assets and deliver true economic industrial decarbonization today that is operationally reliable and highly scalable. Utility’s technology produces both economic clean hydrogen and capture-ready CO2 streams, and this capital enables us to scale and deploy that impact globally with speed, discipline, and rigor.”

Utility Global's H2Gen technology produces low-cost, clean hydrogen from water and industrial off-gases without requiring electricity. It's designed to integrate into existing industrial infrastructure in hard-to-abate assets in the steel, refining, petrochemical, chemical, low-carbon fuels, and upstream oil and gas sectors.

“Utility is tackling one of the most difficult challenges in the energy transition: decarbonizing hard‑to‑abate industrial sectors,” Cory Steffek, partner at Ara Partners and Utility Global board chair, said in the release. “What sets Utility apart is its ability to compete head‑to‑head with conventional fossil‑based solutions on cost and reliability, even as it materially reduces emissions. With this new funding, Utility is well-positioned for its next chapter of commercial growth while maintaining the technical excellence and capital discipline that have defined its development to date.”

Utility Global reached several major milestones in 2025. After closing a $53 million Series C, the company agreed to develop at least one decarbonization facility at an ArcelorMittal steel plant in Brazil. It also signed a strategic partnership with California-based Kyocera International Inc. to scale global manufacturing of its H2Gen electrochemical cells.

The company also partnered with Maas Energy Works, another California company, to develop a commercial project integrating Maas’ dairy biogas systems with H2Gen to produce economical, clean hydrogen.

"These projects were never intended to stand alone. They anchor a deep and growing pipeline of commercial projects now in development globally across steel, refining, chemicals, biogas and other hard-to-abate sectors worldwide, Meeks shared in a 2025 year-in-review note. He added that 2026 would be a year of "focused acceleration to scale."

Houston energy pioneer elected to National Academy of Sciences leadership

top honor

Naomi Halas, a Rice University professor and co-founder of Syzygy Plasmonics, was elected to the Council of the National Academy of Sciences this month.

The council sets priorities for the nonprofit organization, which advises the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Halas will serve a three-year term on the council, beginning July 1.

“The council’s work is focused on the academy’s national leadership and governance,” Halas said in a news release. “It plays an important role in helping set initiatives and priorities for the scientific community, and in supporting the conditions that allow science to move forward in meaningful ways.”

Halas is best known for her pioneering work in nanophotonics and plasmonics. She helped develop nanoshells, or metal-coated nanoparticles that capture light energy, which have led to innovations in renewable energy, cancer therapy and water purification.

Halas co-founded Syzygy Plasmonics with frequent collaborator and fellow Rice professor Peter Nordlander. The company is developing low-cost, light-driven, all-electric chemical reactors for the sustainable production of hydrogen fuel. It was named to Fast Company's energy innovation list last year.

Syzygy Plasmonics is developing its first commercial-scale biogas-to-sustainable aviation fuel project in Uruguay, known as NovaSAF-1. It secured a six-year offtake agreement for the entire production from the project with Singapore-based commodity company Trafigura this month.

Halas was first elected to become a member of the NAS in 2013, and was shortly after named to the National Academy of Engineering in 2014—making her one of the few scientists to hold both distinctions. She received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry last year. Many scientists who have received the award have gone on to win Nobel prizes.

She is also the co-founder of Nanospectra Biosciences and a member of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters. She holds more than 25 patents, according to Rice.

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