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Deadline extended: Nominations open for InnovationMap's 2023 Houston Innovation Awards

Do you think you know the best of Houston's innovation community? Now's your chance to shine the spotlight on a deserving innovator. Photo via Getty Images

InnovationMap has extended the nomination deadline to September 22 at midnight. The original article appears below.

We're looking to highlight the best in Houston innovation — do you think you know who has what it takes?

For the third year, InnovationMap is hosting an awards program that will recognize the best of the rest in Houston's innovation ecosystem. Again collaborating with Houston Exponential, the awards program will be on Wednesday, November 8, at Silver Street Studios.

The nomination period — which includes submitting nominations on behalf of yourself or others — will close September 19. Nominees will be sent an application, which will be due October 4. A panel of judges will review the applications and finalists will be announced and notified ahead of the event.

This year's categories include a few new awards — as well as the return of some crowd favorites. Nominees can be submitted to multiple categories.The 2023 Houston Innovation Awards include:

  • BIPOC-Owned Business, honoring an innovative company founded or co-founded by BIPOC representation
  • Female-Owned Business, honoring an innovative company founded or co-founded by a woman
  • Hardtech Business, honoring an innovative company developing and commercializing a physical technology
  • Digital Solutions Business, honoring an innovative company developing and programming a digital solution to a problem in an industry
  • Social Impact Business, honoring an innovative company providing a solution that would enhance humanity or society in a significant way
  • Sustainability Business, honoring an innovative company providing a solution within renewables, climatetech, clean energy, alternative materials, circular economy, and beyond
  • Life Science Business, honoring an innovative company within the health and medical industries designing a treatment or technology
  • Corporate of the Year, honoring a corporation that supports startups and/or the Houston innovation community
  • DEI Champion, honoring an individual who is leading impactful diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and progress within Houston and their organization
  • Ecosystem Builder, honoring an individual who has acted as a leader in developing Houston’s startup ecosystem
  • Mentor of the Year, honoring an individual who dedicates their time and expertise to guide and support to budding entrepreneurs
  • People's Choice: Startup of the Year, selected via an interactive voting portal during the event

Additionally, the awards gala will honor an innovator who's made a lasting impact on the Houston innovation community. While you may nominate an individual for the Trailblazer Award via the online form, the judging committee will not require applications or nominations for this category and will be considering potential honorees from the ecosystem at large.

If you are interested in sponsorship opportunities, please reach out to misti@gowmedia.com.

Click here to submit a nomination or see form below.

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A research team housed out of the newly launched Rice Biotech Launch Pad received funding to scale tech that could slash cancer deaths in half. Photo via Rice University

A research funding agency has deployed capital into a team at Rice University that's working to develop a technology that could cut cancer-related deaths in half.

Rice researchers received $45 million from the National Institutes of Health's Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, to scale up development of a sense-and-respond implant technology. Rice bioengineer Omid Veiseh leads the team developing the technology as principal investigator.

“Instead of tethering patients to hospital beds, IV bags and external monitors, we’ll use a minimally invasive procedure to implant a small device that continuously monitors their cancer and adjusts their immunotherapy dose in real time,” he says in a news release. “This kind of ‘closed-loop therapy’ has been used for managing diabetes, where you have a glucose monitor that continuously talks to an insulin pump. But for cancer immunotherapy, it’s revolutionary.”

Joining Veiseh on the 19-person research project named THOR, which stands for “targeted hybrid oncotherapeutic regulation,” is Amir Jazaeri, co-PI and professor of gynecologic oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The device they are developing is called HAMMR, or hybrid advanced molecular manufacturing regulator.

“Cancer cells are continually evolving and adapting to therapy. However, currently available diagnostic tools, including radiologic tests, blood assays and biopsies, provide very infrequent and limited snapshots of this dynamic process," Jazaeri adds. "As a result, today’s therapies treat cancer as if it were a static disease. We believe THOR could transform the status quo by providing real-time data from the tumor environment that can in turn guide more effective and tumor-informed novel therapies.”

With a national team of engineers, physicians, and experts across synthetic biology, materials science, immunology, oncology, and more, the team will receive its funding through the Rice Biotech Launch Pad, a newly launched initiative led by Veiseh that exists to help life-saving medical innovation scale quickly.

"Rice is proud to be the recipient of the second major funding award from the ARPA-H, a new funding agency established last year to support research that catalyzes health breakthroughs," Rice President Reginald DesRoches says. "The research Rice bioengineer Omid Veiseh is doing in leading this team is truly groundbreaking and could potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives each year. This is the type of research that makes a significant impact on the world.”

The initial focus of the technology will be on ovarian cancer, and this funding agreement includes a first-phase clinical trial of HAMMR for the treatment of recurrent ovarian cancer that's expected to take place in the fourth year of THOR’s multi-year project.

“The technology is broadly applicable for peritoneal cancers that affect the pancreas, liver, lungs and other organs,” Veiseh says. “The first clinical trial will focus on refractory recurrent ovarian cancer, and the benefit of that is that we have an ongoing trial for ovarian cancer with our encapsulated cytokine ‘drug factory’ technology. We'll be able to build on that experience. We have already demonstrated a unique model to go from concept to clinical trial within five years, and HAMMR is the next iteration of that approach.”

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