T. T. Chao Symposium on Innovation

Infrastructures for Innovation: Making Space for Innovation in the 21st Century

The T. T. Chao Symposium on Innovation celebrates and encourages innovation in the Houston, Texas, region. This event brings together established and emerging leaders in the technical, entrepreneurial, health-care, and policy arenas to think constructively about how Houston’s industrial and entrepreneurial heritage can be adapted to address society’s needs in the 21st century.

The Infrastructures for Innovation series within the Chao Symposium on Innovation examines and draws attention to the systems needed to support innovation and innovation-based industries and the ways in which historical industries continue to shape the future of innovation.

In this series, which spans symposia from 2018 to 2020, we will explore three elements of this innovation infrastructure.

1. Capital (2018)
   Where is capital located, and how can it get to where it is needed?
    
2. Spaces of Innovation (2019)
   Where does innovation happen, what connects the spaces, and how are they being remade for the 21st-century economy?
    
3. Policy (2020)
   How do we understand the policies that guide and shape innovation and innovation-based industries from the local to the federal level? How do we reinterpret the models of yesterday, and what changes would be required to foster the kinds of innovation-based systems we need for social, economic, and environmental health?

Infrastructures for Innovation: Making Space for Innovation in the 21st Century draws attention to the places of innovation, exploring the relationships between the physical location of innovation and industry and what connects them. The symposium focuses on intersecting aspects of innovation space development: real-estate development as part of a broader process of transformation that connects what was with what could be; transportation as a means of understanding how people and materials flow through and between spaces; and intersections with the natural environment through processes of design that accommodate the new realities of a 21st-century climate. Speakers and participants in this symposium will explore the various topics intersecting with and emerging from discussions about the revitalization of the nation’s industrial cities, from rethinking transportation and mobility to next-generation energy-industrial infrastructures and the design of smart cities.

 

Conference Schedule
 

4:00 p.m.	Registration and Refreshments
4:30 p.m.	Opening Remarks Albert Y. Chao Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Foundation Robert G. W. Anderson President and CEO, Science History Institute Jody A. Roberts Director, Institute for Research, Science History Institute
4:45 p.m.	Infrastructure 2.0: Reimagining Transportation and Mobility in the Future Industrial City   Moderator John P. Smolen Partner, Nossaman LLP   Panelists Tom Schenk Jr. Director of Analytics, KPMG Alexander Pazuchaniacs Assistant Director, Planning, Policy, and Permitting, Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, City of Pittsburgh
5:50 p.m.	Retooling for the 21st Century: Where Work Happens in the Next Economy   Moderator Arthur Daemmrich Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Director, Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, Smithsonian Institution   Panelists William Provine President and CEO, Delaware Innovation Space Alicia Llewellyn Strategist, Johnson Space Center, NASA Richard Gruber Chief Commercial Officer, Merit SI, LLC
7:00 p.m.	Closing Reception

 

Parking

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The T. T. Chao Symposium on Innovation is an annual event designed and hosted by the Science History Institute and made possible by a gift from the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Foundation in Houston.

 

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