Smart Cities World: Texas alliance offers hands-on smart city learnings
March 13, 2024: Programme aims to highlight the “brightest and most innovative” projects across North Texas while providing hands-on learning experiences for NTXIA members. North Texas Innovation Alliance, a regional consortium of over 40 municipalities, agencies, corporations and academic institutions across North Texas, has launched an innovative programme to showcase smart city solutions across the region.
The programme aims to highlight the “brightest and most innovative” projects across North Texas while providing hands-on learning experiences for NTXIA members.
Innovation community
Through the Immersive Innovation programme, NTXIA organises hands-on innovation experiences, or field trips, quarterly. In addition to benefiting NTXIA membership, these field trips allow the innovation community across North Texas to showcase their research, pilot projects and campus environments to a diverse audience looking for solutions to a variety of challenges.
The interactions serve as another opportunity for members to connect with companies and researchers who are at the forefront of cutting-edge technology that could directly impact the future standard of living and economic development in the region and allow NTXIA members to witness in real-time how emerging technologies and solutions can be applied in real-world settings.
“This is another avenue for our members to be exposed to groundbreaking research and opportunities so they may best serve their communities and stakeholders” - JENNIFER SANDERS, Executive Director, North Texas Innovation Alliance
“This programme is key for our membership in 2024 as our members have more of a desire than ever to see the latest innovations across the state,” said Jennifer Sanders, executive director, NTXIA.
“The creation of our Immersive Innovation programme stemmed from direct feedback from our members requesting to see innovative research and applications to serve both as inspiration and to identify solutions for each of their unique challenges.”
She continued: “At NTXIA, our goal is to act as the connector between the public, private and academic sectors, and this programme acts as another way to both educate and connect our members to the latest and greatest innovations in our region.”
The Immersive Innovation programme kicked off at the National Science Foundation’s newly opened eCat Centre at the University of North Texas, focusing on research across electric, connected and autonomous technologies for mobility. NTXIA is planning for the next Immersive event to be held at the Richardson Innovation Quarter, also known as Richardson IQ. This living laboratory facility serves both startups and scale-ups in their journey of innovation and solution deployment.
NTXIA’s goal is to have three to four Immersive Innovation events over the year for their members. Each event will be at a different location, highlighting different technologies and organisations that may be able to offer helpful solutions across the region.
“The feedback we have received thus far from the programme has been phenomenal,” added NTXIA director of strategic partnerships Yumna Bham. “It makes an incredible difference for our members to see these solutions live and to speak with these innovation hubs directly. This is another avenue for our members to be exposed to groundbreaking research and opportunities so they may best serve their communities and stakeholders. We are excited to see how the programme will continue to grow throughout this year.”