Two UHCL Alumni are helping build a young, Houston-based company that’s seeking to trailblaze what they see as the next major AI frontier: humanoid robotics.

Meet Persona AI

Founded in 2024 by former NASA Roboticist Nicolaus Radford who, among other accomplishments, led the development of their Valkyrie humanoid robot at Johnson Space Center, Persona AI is setting out to do just what its name would have you believe: personify AI.

They’re aiming to accomplish this by taking a different approach than other AI and Robotics companies which almost exclusively focus on either software, like LLMs, or hardware. According to Radford, Persona is actively establishing integrated systems that link together hardware, autonomy, and learning.

“The robot is the physical interface, but the intelligence that allows it to operate in unstructured, real-world environments is the core differentiator,” Radford said in an email.

While reliable operation and decision making in real-world environments is the current goal for their robots, Persona’s primary focus in developing these humanoids is to address hiring and staffing shortfalls in hard labor jobs, not attempting to replicate humans in a 1:1 capacity. Over the next ten years, they see this incorporation of humanoids into these settings as becoming much more common, and plan to be in on the ground floor of making that transition real at scale, according to Radford.

“Our vision is to deploy 10M (million) machines into work that is too hard, too dangerous, or too hard to staff for,” said Radford in the same email.

With goals as ambitious as these, especially in a space as new and relatively uncharted as the integration of humanoid robotics in challenging work environments, putting together a team made up of exclusively grizzled and experienced industry professionals would seem to be in order. And yet, that’s not the case for Persona.

Persona AI’s UHCL Ties

“There isn’t a 20-year playbook for most of the problems we’re solving,” said Radford. “That creates a space for people who are curious, fast, and willing to take ownership early.”

And it’s that space in which two UHCL alumni have been able to thrive at Persona: Norjelly Herrera and Jonathan Reichel.

A Spring 2025 graduate and former award-winning writer for The Signal, Herrera was hired on as an Administrative Assistant last October and described over email her position with Persona as providing her the opportunity to interact with various aspects of the organization and its operations.

As for the greater Persona team, Herrera said what most stood out to her was their energy.

“Everyone is genuinely passionate about what they do, and it shows,” said Herrera.

Echoing Radford, Herrera also mentioned the strong sense of ownership she feels the Persona team embodies, saying “people aren’t just talking about ideas, they’re executing them.”

Reichel received his Bachelor of Applied Design and Visual Arts degree from UHCL in 2009 and currently serves as Persona’s Principal Marketing Architect.

A more experienced industry professional, Reichel was most recently back on campus in the Bayou Building last month, when a student group working with Persona as part of a Strategic Campaigns course taught by Dr. Anna Klyueva, Professor of Communication and Public Relations, organized and hosted a Humanoid Career Seminar open for students of all majors to attend.

Also in attendance were Dr. Liu Zhichao, Assistant Professor of Computer Engineering, and Dr. Luong Nguyen, Associate Professor of Computer Engineering and faculty advisor to UHCL’s first-ever Lunabotics Challenge team, as guest speakers.

The purpose behind organizing the seminar was for UHCL students who might not initially consider the possibility of a career in humanoid robotics to be made aware that there’s more needed in the field than just engineers. Persona AI clearly shows this, according to Strategic Campaigns student Chloe Stegner, who is herself a Literature Major with a minor in Communication.

Speaking on behalf of her group, Stegner said that they considered the seminar to have been incredibly successful.

“We had a packed house and had to bring in extra chairs to fit the number of attendees,” said Stegner. “Overall, we feel that students were left with an awareness of Persona AI, a better understanding of their human-forward humanoid mission, and pathways for career opportunities in this industry.”

Looking Ahead

Radford says that Persona plans to continue building in Houston in tandem with their aims of more global expansion. On the subject of the city, Radford said “it sits at the intersection of energy, manufacturing, and logistics.”

Having already signed an agreement for commercial deployment of their humanoids to South Korean shipyards by 2027 with HD Hyundai, in addition to partnering with the state of Louisiana to launch a pilot program at SSE Steel Fabrication, Persona AI has been making strides toward their ultimate goal of establishing Houston and the broader United States as key players in standardizing industrial humanoid integration.

Being under an hour away from UHCL and already closely collaborating with both alumni and current students, it’s hard to think of a better place for Houston-area locals interested in the rapidly growing humanoid robotics field to look towards than Persona AI.