In the News: Comets Making Headlines

Jacky Chao BA’22 and two business partners appeared on the television show “Shark Tank” seeking investment in their startup Creator Camp, which Chao and friends launched while he was still a UT Dallas student. Creator Camp is a technology education summer camp for kids who are taught to become online content creators.

Chao, along with Kaisei Forman and Cazden Morrison, approached “Shark Tank” to be considered as guest entrepreneurs and were invited to pitch their concept to a panel of potential investors. The Creator Camp founders described their business model in an episode that aired Nov. 15, explaining that it had grown to 27 locations across Texas and realized $840,000 in revenue this past summer. The presentation piqued the interest of investor Barbara Corcoran who offered to invest if Creator Camp became a franchise. Chao and his partners agreed.

The Dallas Business Journal recently recognized a pair of UT Dallas alumni for their business success including Mahesh Shetty MBA’99, founder and CEO of ILE Homes, whose home construction business was No. 6 on the DBJ’s list of the top 100 fastest growing businesses in North Texas for 2024. Shetty is a member of the Naveen Jindal School of Management Advisory Council.

The DBJ also recognized Curt Hazelbaker BA’89, president and CEO of the YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas, as a recipient of its 2024 C-Suite Leaders Award, which “highlights inspiring stories taking place atop businesses across the metroplex.”

“With membership numbers steadily climbing back toward pre-pandemic levels, Curt Hazelbaker has helped the YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas achieve growth levels he could have only dreamed of when he first joined the organization … ,” said a DBJ feature announcing the honor.

Closer to home, the work of UT Dallas researcher Dr. Francesca Filbey MS’97 has been featured in the The Dallas Morning News. Filbey, the UT Dallas Bert Moore Chair in BrainHealth and a professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, recently published research in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse about the effects of marijuana use on sleep and memory, which was written about by The Dallas Morning News. Filbey and fellow researchers report that those diagnosed with cannabis use disorder are more likely to experience poor sleep and perform worse on tests of the ability to retain and process information. “Memory has been widely known to be a potential impairment as a result of cannabis use,” Filbey said. “But we don’t know yet what the mechanisms are. We especially don’t know how that relates to people who use cannabis as a sleep aid.”