A Rice University student decided to use his data science skills for good. Photo courtesy of Biokind Analytics

For Alex Han, it all started with peanut butter.

Han was a high school student in Korea when he learned that the spread is a pure odorant that could be used to test smell in each hemisphere of the brain—issues on the left side was thought to be a predictor for Alzheimer’s disease. He later learned that the method wasn’t as airtight as previously thought, but Han was hooked. Alzheimer’s research became the teenager’s passion. While still in high school, Han began volunteering for Alzheimer’s Los Angeles, translating their brochures into Korean.

When it came time to choose a college, Han says Rice University appealed to him for many reasons.

“I loved the atmosphere. I loved the campus—it’s so beautiful. The diverse food, the people, I even liked the highway,” he says of Houston. “In Korea, everything is so close and compact. I loved the whole scenario of the city.”

A scholarship was also part of the appeal, as well as the pull of the world’s largest medical center. Han’s instincts were correct. Now, a junior at Rice, he has been working at renowned geneticist Huda Zoghbi’s Baylor College of Medicine lab for almost two years.

But dividing his obligations between full-time studies and his wet lab position wasn’t enough to keep Han’s active mind occupied. Last May, the statistics and biochemistry student began another endeavor that uses both his specialties. It was then that he founded Biokind Analytics. The nonprofit was designed to explore how data science can support health care nonprofits.

Han reached out to Alzheimer’s Los Angeles to offer his data analysis services on a volunteer basis and was shocked that the association had never considered it before.

“I was really surprised—even small stores and restaurants use statistics to boost their profits. [Alzheimer’s Los Angeles] receive a couple million dollars every year in donations. They have data stores but hadn’t really capitalized yet in the area of analytics.”

Han, along with a small team of Rice students, including vice president Zac Andrews and development director Masha Zaitsev, made Alzheimer’s Los Angeles a pet project, analyzing geospatial trends in its donorship and interpreting the past year’s donation trends. “We wanted to see if the demand was the same in Houston. We found that this pattern was consistent. A lot of nonprofits are willing to have us analyze the data sets they’ve already been tracking and provide data analysis for healthcare nonprofits.”

Less than a year after Han established Biokind Analytics, the 501(c)(3) already has seven chapters on college campuses around the country. From UC Davis and San Diego in the West to Brown University and the University of Virginia on the East Coast, the data science students have helped a diverse range of medical nonprofits, mostly based in the Houston area. They run the gamut from ALS Association of Texas to Nora’s Home, which serves organ failure and transplant patients.

Biokind Analytics has now completed seven projects and analyzed $100 million in funds. Each student group includes four to six members, mostly majors in the worlds of statistics, data science, and biochemistry, all working with the help of faculty advisors. At a total of about 35 students nationwide, Han says that he’s dedicated to growing at a steady pace to avoid potentially expanding too fast, too soon.

Another question for the future is what will happen to Biokind Analytics when Han completes his undergraduate studies in 2024. He plans to continue his medical studies with the goal of one day becoming a physician specializing in Alzheimer’s who uses data analytics to aid in patient care. But no matter how active Han continues to be in the nonprofit he started, his stated attachment to the cause and a growing group of both student leaders and healthcare associations eager for their services are sure to keep Biokind Analytics active long after graduation.

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Rice University MBA programs rank among top 5 in prestigious annual report

top of class

Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business MBA programs have been ranked among the top five in the country again in The Princeton Review’s 2025 Best Business Schools rankings.

The university's MBA program in finance earned a No. 3 ranking, climbing up two spots from its 2024 ranking. Finance MBA programs at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business and New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business were the only ones to outrank Rice, claiming No. 2 and No. 1 spots, respectively.

Rice's online MBA program was ranked No. 5, compared to No. 4 last year. Indiana University's Bloomington Kelley School of Business' online program claimed the top spot.

“These rankings reflect the commitment of our faculty and staff, the drive and talent of our students and the strong support of our alumni and partners,” Peter Rodriguez, dean of Rice Business, said in a news release. “They are exceptional honors but also reminders — not just of our top-tier programs and world-class faculty and students but of our broader impact on the future of business education.”

Rice also ranked at No. 6 for “greatest resources for minority students."

The Princeton Review’s 2025 business school rankings are based on data from surveys of administrators at 244 business schools as well as surveys of 22,800 students enrolled in the schools’ MBA programs during the previous three academic years.

"The schools that made our lists for 2025 share four characteristics that inform our criteria for designating them as 'best': excellent academics, robust experiential learning components, outstanding career services, and positive feedback about them from enrolled students we surveyed," Rob Franek, The Princeton Review's editor-in-chief, said in a press release. "No b-school is best overall or best for all students, but to all students considering earning an MBA, we highly recommend these b-schools and salute them for their impressive programs."

Rice's finance program has ranked in the top 10 for eight consecutive years, and its online MBA has ranked in the top five for four years.

Rice and the University of Houston also claimed top marks on the Princeton Review's entrepreneurship rankings. Rice ranks as No. 1 on the Top 50 Entrepreneurship: Grad list, and the University of Houston ranked No. 1 on Top 50 Entrepreneurship: Ugrad. Read more here.

Houston named ‘star’ metro for artificial intelligence in new report

eyes on AI

A new report declares Houston one of the country’s 28 “star” hubs for artificial intelligence.

The Houston metro area appears at No. 16 in the Brookings Institution’s ranking of metros that are AI “stars.” The metro areas earned star status based on data from three AI buckets: talent, innovation and adoption. Only two places, the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley, made Brookings’ “superstar” list.

According to Brookings, the Houston area had 11,369 job postings in 2024 that sought candidates with AI skills, 210 AI startups (based on Crunchbase data from 2014 to 2024), and 113 venture capital deals for AI startups (based on PitchBook data from 2023 to 2024).

A number of developments are boosting Houston’s AI profile, such as:

Brookings also named Texas’s three other major metros as AI stars:

  • No. 11 Austin
  • No. 13 Dallas-Fort Worth
  • No. 40 San Antonio

Brookings said star metros like Houston “are bridging the gap” between the two superstar regions and the rest of the country. In 2025, the 28 star metros made up 46 percent of the country’s metro-area employment but 54 percent of AI job postings. Across the 28 metros, the number of AI job postings soared 139 percent between 2018 and 2025, according to Brookings.

Around the country, dozens of metros fell into three other categories on Brookings’ AI list: “emerging centers” (14 metros), “focused movers” (29 metros) and “nascent adopters” (79 metros).