HOUSTON, TEXAS, Oct 2017- Visionary policy makers in academia, private industry, and government recently announced a plan to make Houston a world leader in technology and innovation. This initiative comes as a requisite to embrace a sustainable approach to grow and strengthen Houston’s economy.

City of Houston Council Member, Amanda K. Edwards, is part of a task force that recently presented the recommendations to Mayor Turner and the City Council. The plan received overwhelming support and is moving forward toward implementation.

In the past, Houston focused on energy, life science and aerospace paving the way to lead in these fields. However, the future of innovation is now projected to be in industrial internet-of-things, cybersecurity and robotics.

The forward-thinking plan presented incorporates academia, the corporations, start ups, investors, and government in order to turn this vision into a reality.

According to Council Member Edwards, educational institutions like San Jacinto College in Pasadena, Texas, is one of those entities. “Academia plays a key role in building the innovation economy. Not only should the student curriculum support this endeavor, but opportunities to expose students to training and job opportunities in technology and innovation remain critical to this effort, as well,” she commented.

Innovation to transform Houston into a hub for the next leap in technology is something San Jacinto College has been developing for the past decade. Nathanial Wiggins, Professor of Mathematics and Engineering and Principal Investigator AI-Tech Labs at San Jacinto College believes that “Houston has the ingredients to be a world hub in robotics and artificial intelligence.” He adds, “Houston has talent from world-renowned universities and a nationally recognized college with top-notch technical skills such as San Jacinto College.” He continued, “We have medical, aerospace, defense and are growing a manufacturing industry. We have NASA who has continually inspired scientific development.”

Over the years, San Jacinto College has created a suite of STEM programs that are the gateway into these technology careers that are giving it national recognition. By way of illustration, San Jacinto College’s robotics team competed in April of 2017 in Orlando Florida at Kennedy Space Center. This national contest is called NASA Swarmathon and it consists of building and programming several micro rovers that will one day be sent to Mars of other planets.

San Jacinto College and its partner University of Houston-Clear Lake (UHCL) placed fourth.

In total, San Jacinto College in partnership with the UHCL competed in four regional and national robotic competitions and San Jacinto’s, AI-Tech Labs Team, placed in the top position.

These awards are significant due to working with smaller budgets and lacking corporate sponsorships compared with other tier-one technical universities.

According to Professor Wiggins, “In any competition, we set out to teach students the scientific research and documentation process. They should think about systems critically and collaboratively. This innovation is now being applied to 3D modeling, microcontroller programming, AI and other technology that will replace current jobs. These breakthrough technologies are creating several types of daisy-chain servo motor robotic systems, such as humanoids, spiders, dinosaurs- and dragons."

San Jacinto College is graduating students proficient in STEM fields for the new economy and leading the charge are students of Hispanic origin.

Graduates such as Jose Daniel Velazco-Garcia are representative of Hispanics migrating to these minority under-represented fields. Jose is a 24year old graduate of San Jacinto in Computer Science who transferred to UHCL and graduated in the fall of 2016. He is now transferring to the main campus of University of Houston for a Ph.D. in computer science doing research on robotic surgeries and medical data 3D representation. Jose explains the key for his trajectory, “I believe San Jacinto has phenomenal professors. I majored in math while I was there. I also worked as a math tutor for the second half of the time I was there. I can say that I became friends of my professors. They were approachable and supportive.”

Future academic and industry forecasts indicate that education in STEM fields will be in high demand and many manual jobs will disappear. Professor Wiggins summarizes, “We see that the job market is becoming more international and more heavily reliant on artificial intelligence. Many low wage jobs will soon be replaced by intelligent systems and we need a way for these systems to be designed, built, programmed, implemented, and maintained. San Jacinto College will be a leader in providing initial technical and academic training for these workers as well as the provider of later professional development to keep employees using top skills.”