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NMSI Launches GM New Teacher Academy Houston to Empower First-Year STEM Teachers of Color

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Initiative aims to enhance diversity and excellence in STEM education through critical training and resources for 120 early-career STEM educators of color.

HOUSTON, June 25, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — The National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) and General Motors (GM), in collaboration with teachHOUSTON, announce the launch of the GM New Teacher Academy Houston. This groundbreaking initiative, supported by a generous $500,000 contribution from GM and an additional $100,000 from CenterPoint Energy, will provide essential professional development and support for up to120 early career STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) teachers of color.

“Initiatives like the GM New Teacher Academy are crucial for investing in the future of education, ensuring that all students, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, have the opportunity to thrive in STEM fields.”

“Through our partnership with General Motors and CenterPoint Energy, we are committed to fostering diversity and excellence in STEM education,” said Jeremy Anderson, CEO of NMSI. “Initiatives like the GM New Teacher Academy are crucial for investing in the future of education, ensuring that all students, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, have the opportunity to thrive in STEM fields.”

In the U.S., more than 50% of students in public schools identify as non-white, yet only 21% of public school teachers are from diverse backgrounds. This disparity is even more pronounced in STEM fields, which are projected to grow faster and offer higher-paying jobs than other occupations. Teachers of color play a critical role in advocating for students from similar backgrounds, helping to bridge this representation gap and fostering inclusive educational environments.

“At GM, we understand the pivotal role educators play in shaping the future of technology and innovation,” said Kelsey Gaines (she/her), Senior Manager, STEM Education at GM. “By supporting the GM New Teacher Academy, we are investing not only in teachers, but also in a diverse and talented workforce that will propel our industry forward. We are proud to partner with NMSI on this essential initiative.”

This initiative is a critical milestone in NMSI’s strategic commitment to enhancing diversity and excellence in STEM education. It aligns with the broader goals of the STEMM Opportunity Alliance and the You Belong in STEM initiatives by the White House. Through this effort, NMSI is dedicated to providing high-quality, evidence-based professional development to 4,800 STEM teachers identifying as Black, Latino, or Indigenous by 2027.

June Deadrick, CenterPoint Energy Vice President of Community Relations, emphasized the importance of supporting new teachers in STEM. “CenterPoint Energy Foundation is proud to contribute to advancing STEM education through the GM New Teacher Academy. This initiative aligns with our commitment to educational equity and community empowerment.”

The GM New Teacher Academy Houston training will be held from June 25-28, 2024, at the University of Houston campus. This event will feature esteemed speakers and hands-on training sessions designed to equip new teachers with the skills and confidence to excel in their careers and positively impact their students.

Event Highlights:

Date: June 25-28, 2024Locations: Hilton, University of Houston, Melcher Hall, Classrooms & Business Building, and Science Teaching Lab at The University of Houston.Opening Keynote: Rebecca Peterson, 2023 National Teacher of the Year, will set the stage with an inspiring address about creating a connected STEM classroom.Training Sessions: NMSI’s expert facilitators will conduct comprehensive professional development workshops on innovative teaching strategies and mastery of STEM content.Closing Dinner: The academy will include a celebratory dinner at Space Center Houston, featuring a keynote by Dr. Bernard Harris, Jr., former NMSI CEO and astronaut.Media Availability: Dr. Bernard Harris, Jr., and Rebecca Peterson will be available for interviews. Media representatives are encouraged to RSVP to secure interview slots.

Amanda Campos, executive director of the New Teacher Academy at the University of Houston, teachHOUSTON expressed her enthusiasm for hosting the event. “The University of Houston is honored to host the GM New Teacher Academy. Our Houston program is dedicated to developing the next generation of STEM educators, and this partnership with NMSI and GM perfectly aligns with our mission to support and uplift teachers of color.”

For more information on how to support early-career STEM teachers in your community, contact NMSI or visit https://www.nms.org/.

About the National Math and Science Initiative
(NMSI) The National Math and Science Initiative is dedicated to improving student outcomes in math and science, particularly in underserved communities. By providing educators with high-quality professional development and support, NMSI ensures that all students have access to the skills and knowledge needed to thrive in a rapidly changing world. For more information, visit http://www.nms.org.

About General Motors
General Motors is a global company focused on advancing an all-electric future that is inclusive and accessible to all. At the heart of this strategy is the Ultium battery platform, which will power everything from mass-market to high-performance vehicles. General Motors, its subsidiaries and its joint venture entities sell vehicles under the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, Baojun and Wuling brands. More information on the company and its subsidiaries, including OnStar, a global leader in safety services and connected vehicle technology, can be found at https://www.gm.com.

About CenterPoint Energy
CenterPoint Energy, Inc. is a domestic energy delivery company that includes electric transmission and distribution, natural gas distribution, and energy services operations. We are committed to enabling the future of energy and dedicated to the communities we serve. More information is available at http://www.centerpointenergy.com.

About the University of Houston and teachHOUSTON
The University of Houston, a designated Hispanic-serving institution, is a public research university committed to providing a world-class education to a diverse student body. The teachHouston program in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics prepares traditionally and alternatively certified teacher candidates seeking to become secondary STEM teachers for the greater Houston area and beyond who can inspire and educate the next generation of innovators. Learn more at https://uh.edu/nsm/teachhouston/ and @uhteachhouston.

Media Contact

NMSI, NMSI, 1 608-218-5066, madison.lee@finnpartners.com, https://www.nms.org/

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Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

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Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

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Air Products to Expand Industrial Gas Supply for Samsung Electronics’ Next-Generation Semiconductor Fab in South Korea

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New investment underscores the company’s long-term commitment to Korea and its leading role in the global semiconductor industry 

LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Air Products (NYSE:APD), a world-leading industrial gases company and serving Samsung globally, today announced it has been selected by Samsung to supply industrial gases for its new advanced semiconductor fab in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea.

Under the agreement, Air Products will build, own and operate multiple state-of-the-art production facilities and a bulk specialty gas supply system to supply nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and hydrogen for Samsung’s new semiconductor fab. The new facilities are expected to come onstream in multiple phases from 2028 through 2030.

Air Products has a long track record of executing multiple phase expansions in Pyeongtaek to support Samsung’s growing manufacturing needs. This latest project represents Air Products’ largest investment to date in the semiconductor industry and will establish Pyeongtaek as the company’s single largest operations site globally supporting the electronics industry. 

“Air Products is honored to be selected once again by Samsung and to have their continued confidence as a trusted partner supporting their strategic growth plans,” said SR Kim, President, Air Products Korea. “This significant investment reinforces Air Products’ role as a leading global supplier to the semiconductor industry and underscores our long-standing commitment to supporting our strategic customers with safety, reliability, efficiency and excellent service.”

Air Products has served the global electronics industry for more than 40 years, supplying industrial gases safely and reliably to many of the world’s leading technology companies. The company has operated in Korea for more than 50 years and has established a strong position in electronics and manufacturing sectors.

About Air Products

Air Products (NYSE: APD) is a world-leading industrial gases company in operation for over 85 years focused on serving energy, environmental, and emerging markets and generating a cleaner future. The Company supplies essential industrial gases, related equipment and applications expertise to customers in dozens of industries, including refining, chemicals, metals, electronics, manufacturing, medical and food. As the leading global supplier of hydrogen, Air Products also develops, engineers, builds, owns and operates some of the world’s largest clean hydrogen projects, supporting the transition to low- and zero-carbon energy in the industrial and heavy-duty transportation sectors. Through its sale of equipment businesses, the Company also provides turbomachinery, membrane systems and cryogenic containers globally.

Air Products had fiscal 2025 sales of $12 billion from operations in approximately 50 countries. For more information, visit airproducts.com or follow us on LinkedInXFacebook or Instagram.

This release contains “forward-looking statements” within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management’s expectations and assumptions as of the date of this release and are not guarantees of future performance. While forward-looking statements are made in good faith and based on assumptions, expectations and projections that management believes are reasonable based on currently available information, actual performance and financial results may differ materially from projections and estimates expressed in the forward-looking statements because of many factors, including the risk factors described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025 and other factors disclosed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we disclaim any obligation or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in the assumptions, beliefs or expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances upon which any such forward-looking statements are based.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/air-products-to-expand-industrial-gas-supply-for-samsung-electronics-next-generation-semiconductor-fab-in-south-korea-302757497.html

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