University of Houston to host Pumps & Pipes 2 • 11/07/08

Pumps and Pipes is a unique collaborative effort between Houston's largest industries to explore potential crossover ideas and extract shared technologies. Houston, one of the US's largest and fastest-growing cities, is closely tied with its two primary industries: medicine and energy. Combined with Houston's higher education community, the city is home to world-class research.

Pumps and Pipes 2 will be held on December 8, 2008 at the University of Houston. The theme for Pumps and Pipes 2 is “The Other Guy’s Toolkit,” and focuses on “tools” which a presenter from one sector, medicine or energy, believes could have an application in the other industry. These tools will range from modifications of existing equipment or practices to visionary out-of-the-box paradigm shifts.

Sponsoring members include ExxonMobil, the Methodist DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center and the University of Houston.

Using the Other Guy’s Toolkit: Similarities of Pumping Blood, Oil Examined (UH Press Release)
Pumps and Pipes 2 (Methodist page)
Pumps and Pipes 2 (official page)

Houston's famous industries and University of Houston stimulate new avenues for research and collaboration • 12/03/07

A unique collaborative effort between Houston's largest Industries to explore potential crossover ideas and extract shared technologies has taken place on November 12, 2007 at the Pumps and Pipes 1 Conference. Much like moving oil through a pipeline, the heart must pump blood through the body. Our intention was to stimulate discussion, spark ideas and share new technologies between these industries that face similar challenges, even if on a very different scale. The sponsoring members were ExxonMobil, the Methodist DeBakey Heart Center of The Methodist Hospital, and the University of Houston.

Detecting a "time-bomb": Heart attack risk-detection being developed at University of Houston • 01/03/06

Prof. Ioannis Kakadiaris and graduate student Sean O’Malley (Computational Biomedicine Laboratory) are collaborating with leading cardiologists, scientists and engineers from the Association for Eradication of Heart Attack, the University of Athens Medical School, the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, Aarhus University, and the University of Houston to enable physicians, for the first time, to detect microvessels growing in atherosclerotic plaques. These microvessels may indicate whether a plaque is inflamed; plaque inflammation is suspected to be a key factor deciding whether the plaque is vulnerable to future rupture (leading to heart attack or stroke). Early detection of these vulnerable plaques is essential in order to reduce the number of fatalities occurring every year due to heart disease. A press release about their technology is available here.