Ready for Launch: Announcing the Activate Houston Community
We are thrilled to announce Activate’s expansion to Houston, the emerging capital of the global clean energy transition. The new Activate Houston Community joins a growing innovation ecosystem that builds upon the region’s energy leadership with an important new focus on enabling a low-carbon future. We look forward to cultivating high-impact science entrepreneurs in the Houston region to help drive forward this exciting transition.
“Houston is a city where innovation thrives, with an abundance of talent, capital, and infrastructure—the perfect setting for the Activate Fellowship.”
Though known for oil and gas for the past 100 years, Houston is ready to apply its strengths as a hard-tech hub to developing crucial climate technologies, such as carbon capture, energy storage, hydrogen, and utility-scale renewables. The energy-centric city is already leading the United States in its concentration of solar and wind companies (it has more than 130, plus other innovative clean energy companies like Activate Fellow-founded geothermal startup Fervo Energy).
“Houston is a city where innovation thrives, with an abundance of talent, capital, and infrastructure—the perfect setting for the Activate Fellowship,” said Activate Anywhere’s managing director Hannah Murnen at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Innovation Summit in Washington, D.C., where Activate made the announcement.
Houston, Texas
In addition to joining a burgeoning clean energy innovation ecosystem, the Activate Houston Community will benefit from Houston’s deep-rooted culture of discovery and its vibrancy as a city. Houston is a leader in the aerospace, life sciences, and manufacturing industries; is home to several academic institutions with top-notch engineering programs; and is one of the United States’ largest and most diverse cities.
“Houston’s diversity offers great promise in expanding access for the next generation of science entrepreneurs and as a center of innovation for advanced energy.”
Fellows in the new Activate Houston Community will also join Activate’s network of close-knit communities based in Berkeley, Boston, New York, and across the country (Activate Anywhere). Activate provides several angles of support for promising science entrepreneurs, and this includes access to our dynamic community of current fellows and alumni.
A recent $20M commitment by the National Science Foundation (NSF) with an emphasis on broadening participation in entrepreneurship will help fund Activate’s expansion to Houston. “The NSF is delighted to be able to expand access to entrepreneurial fellowships through Activate,” said Erwin Gianchandani, the NSF’s assistant director for technology, innovation, and partnerships, commenting on the announcement.
“Houston’s diversity offers great promise in expanding access for the next generation of science entrepreneurs and as a center of innovation for advanced energy,” added Ben Schrag, NSF SBIR/STTR program director.
A search is underway for the Activate Houston Community’s first managing director. We look forward to welcoming fellows to the new community in 2024 with the first phases of recruitment kicking off now.