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NASA Tech Talks: From Space to Startup

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Category: Aerospace, Community Event, Founders & Startups, Investors & Capital

Free

Past Event

WHEN

Thursday

May 23, 2024
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm CDT

WHERE

Ion – Forum Stairs
4201 Main St.
Houston, TX 77002

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what

From Space to Startup: Leveraging NASA Technology and Innovation to Propel Your Growing Enterprise. 

NASA’s Technology Transfer Program ensures that innovations developed for exploration and discovery are broadly available to the public. The Tech Transfer Expansion (T2X) Program augments that mission to include a focus on entrepreneurial innovation and creating partnerships to help accelerate commercialization. T2X envisions prosperous NASA-infused tech startup ecosystems across the U.S. Within specified geographic regions, T2X works to accelerate the commercialization of NASA-developed technology by reducing the risk of innovation and assisting new startups.

Walt will introduce you to the NASA Technology Transfer Program, which ensures that these revolutionary technologies, initially designed for space exploration and discovery, are accessible to the public.  Discover hundreds of free software programs and over 1,200 patented technologies available for licensing through NASA’s portfolio. These vast technologies apply to various industries, including health, transportation, public safety, consumer goods, environmental resources, computer technology, and manufacturing.

A key highlight of this session will be introducing the ‘Startup NASA’ program, a unique initiative designed to help startups license NASA’s intellectual property for free for the first three years.

About the Speakers:
Walt Ugalde is an Economic Development and Industry Outreach Executive for NASA’s Technology Transfer & Commercialization Program. Based out of the Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas, Walt works with businesses, startups, co-founders, and Investors to help them leverage NASA developed technology for commercialization into proven products and services as well as mapping industry capabilities back into the NASA mission. Walt has served as the NASA Executive on Loan to the Houston Technology Center (HTC) connecting and advising many of the HTC client startup companies and continues to support technology innovation hubs in Texas and across the Nation.

Walt’s private industry experience includes work within the fields of  Architecture, Urban Planning, Economic Development, Marketing, Advertising, Publishing, and the Motion Picture Industry. Currently, Walt leads the Technology Transfer Expansion (T2X) and the technology Transfer University (T2U) Programs for the Johnson Space Center.

For more infromation about Walt’s work, see below:
Montgomery B. Goforth has over 30 years of experience as both an Engineer and Manager in various highly technical space and defense-related efforts. He joined NASA in 1990 as part of the Mission Operations Directorate, working on planning systems and automated procedure execution tools for the International Space Station (ISS). He became Deputy Project Manager for the Portable Computer System, the laptop used for command and control of the ISS, in 1996. He became Chief of the Branch responsible for all laptops onboard the ISS and the Space Shuttle.
In 2002, he moved to the ISS Avionics and Software Office as Manager of the Flight Software Development Office and later served as Chief Engineer. In 2005, he spent several months at NASA Headquarters working in the Robotics Lunar Exploration Program. In 2006, he joined the Constellation Program as Chief of Avionics and Software Test and Verification and became Chief of the Software and Avionics Integration Office in 2007. In this role, he was responsible for leading a large nationwide Systems Engineering & Integration (SE&I) organization which provided program-level coordination, oversight, integration, and management of the system-of-systems avionics and software, including the coordination of integrated modeling and simulation and test activities across the Constellation program and the technical integration of Constellation’s Command, Control, Communications, and Information (C3I) architecture.
In 2011, he joined the Avionic Systems Division to support their Strategic Planning and Partnership efforts. In 2015, he moved on to Engineering Directorate Staff to support Strategic Pursuits and Partnerships. In this role, he put together a framework to focus better Engineering’s efforts toward Human Spaceflight technology and systems development consistent with JSC and Agency goals for exploration. This framework guides Engineering’s internal investments and external partnerships supporting Lunar and Mars Exploration. Mr. Goforth was born in East Texas, raised in Southern California and Arizona, and graduated from Rice University (BSME 1982, MSME 1987). Before coming to Johnson Space Center, he was employed by a small defense contractor specializing in anti-submarine warfare.

PARKING

Ion District Parking Garage

Enter 4111 Fannin Street into your GPS for directions directly to this parking garage, located a block from the Ion. Parking in the Ion District Garage is free for the first two hours.

Red Parking Lot

Enter 4203 Fannin Street into your GPS for directions directly to the red parking lot, located across the street from the Ion. This lot is for overflow guest parking and tenant parking and is free for the first three hours.

For more information and access to pay online for parking in the red lot, click here. 

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