Weather analytics platform with Houston HQ taps Norwegian biz to optimize tech

weatherproof tech

StormGeo, a Houston-based weather intelligence provider, has partnered with Norwegian company 7Analytics to create technology positioned to revolutionize planning for floods. Photo courtesy of Kinder Institute

There’s no way around it: Houston floods. And with the deluge comes hurdles for businesses. The only real power we have in the face of such adversity is preparation.

StormGeo, a weather intelligence provider with its United States headquarters in Houston, has partnered with Norwegian company 7Analytics to create technology positioned to revolutionize planning for floods.

StormGeo debuted in Norway in 1997. In 2012, it acquired Houston company Impact Weather, says Bob Weinzapfel, a meteorologist and senior project manager of weather insights for StormGeo. Houston is one of 24 offices spread over 15 countries with more than 600 employees, Weinzapfel adds.

The team at 7Analytics, according to Weinzapfel, “Are a bunch of smart flood experts and machine learning experts.” Together, they are introducing a technology that Weinzapfel calls “a game changer” for Houston businesses.

7Analytics uses AI to give users an overview of Houston’s potential flooding based on a 72-hour forecast. “Any business like a grocery store or hospitals or even a refinery—any business with employees or customers, it’s important to know Are the roadways being flooded? Can my employees and customers get in?” says Weinzapfel.

StormGeo has long provided weather insights and guidance to businesses in Houston. Now, detailed maps provide real-time flood forecasting.

The maps forecast the probability of flash flooding in each subbasin, but perhaps more importantly, they can home in on clients’ buildings to show what inundation will look like in parking lots and nearby roads.

"Our product takes a real-time StormGeo weather forecast — for example, the risk of rainfall tomorrow—and translates it into actionable risk info, such as their site is at risk of up to a foot of flooding tomorrow with peak flood occurring at 2 p.m.," explains Jonas Toland, co-founder of 7Analytics.

Armed with such information, businesses can adjust operations ahead. For example, one client is a grocery store chain.

“They have business processes they have to get a jump on. The locations that have customers try to be the last to close and first to open,” Weinzapfel says.

That means that storm tracking can help with letting the store’s team know to purchase more emergency supplies to sell, schedule more employees to help sell them, and know when to close to keep those workers safe.

The Houston version of the solution is the first, but Weinzapfel says that the team is currently working to expand across greater Houston and then into Austin.

“We knew if we could do it here and do a really good job, we could do it anywhere using the same technology,” he adds.

There’s no question that flooding will continue to take place in Houston. But with StormGeo and 7Analytics’ Houston-area flood model, the people that serve us will be prepared.

Let's talk about dark data — what it means and how to navigate it. Graphic by Miguel Tovar/University of Houston

Houston expert: Navigating dark data within research and innovation

houston voices

Is it necessary to share ALL your data? Is transparency a good thing or does it make researchers “vulnerable,” as author Nathan Schneider suggests in the Chronicle of Higher Education article, “Why Researchers Shouldn’t Share All Their Data.”

Dark Data Defined

Dark data is defined as the universe of information an organization collects, processes and stores – oftentimes for compliance reasons. Dark data never makes it to the official publication part of the project. According to the Gartner Glossary, “storing and securing data typically incurs more expense (and sometimes greater risk) than value.”

This topic is reminiscent of the file drawer effect, a phenomenon which reflects the influence of the results of a study on whether or not the study is published. Negative results can be just as important as hypotheses that are proven.

Publication bias and the need to only publish positive research that supports the PI’s hypothesis, it can be argued, is not good science. According to an article in the Indian Journal of Anaesthesia, authors Priscilla Joys Nagarajan, et al., wrote: “It is speculated that every significant result in the published world has 19 non-significant counterparts in file drawers.” That’s one definition of dark data.

Total Transparency

But what to do with all your excess information that did not make it to publication, most likely because of various constraints? Should everything, meaning every little tidbit, be readily available to the research community?

Schneider doesn’t think it should be. In his article, he writes that he hides some findings in a paper notebook or behind a password, and he keeps interviews and transcripts offline altogether to protect his sources.

Open-source

Open-source software communities tend to regard total transparency as inherently good. What are the advantages of total transparency? You may make connections between projects that you wouldn’t have otherwise. You can easily reproduce a peer’s experiment. You can even become more meticulous in your note-taking and experimental methods since you know it’s not private information. Similarly, journalists will recognize this thought pattern as the recent, popular call to engage in “open journalism.” Essentially, an author’s entire writing and editing process can be recorded, step by step.

TMI

This trend has led researchers to open-source programs like Jupyter and GitHub. Open-source programs detail every change that occurs along a project’s timeline. Is unorganized, excessive amounts of unpublishable data really what transparency means? Or does it confuse those looking for meaningful research that is meticulously curated?

The Big Idea

And what about the “vulnerability” claim? Sharing every edit and every new direction taken opens a scientist up to scoffers and harassment, even. Dark data in industry even involves publishing salaries, which can feel unfair to underrepresented, marginalized populations.

In Model View Culture, Ellen Marie Dash wrote: “Let’s give safety and consent the absolute highest priority, with openness and transparency prioritized explicitly below those. This means digging deep, properly articulating in detail what problems you are trying to solve with openness and transparency, and handling them individually or in smaller groups.”

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This article originally appeared on the University of Houston's The Big Idea. Sarah Hill, the author of this piece, is the communications manager for the UH Division of Research.

Alex Reed, co-founder and CEO of Fluence Analytics, joined InnovationMap for a Q&A on the company's move to Houston and its growth plans. Photo courtesy of Fluence Analytics

Fresh off $7.5M funding, this new-to-Houston tech company plans to grow and expand in life science space

q&A

Founded in 2012 in New Orleans, a tech company that provides software and hardware solutions for the chemicals industry has entered its next phase of growth by moving its headquarters to Houston following a $7.5 million venture capital raise.

Fluence Analytics, which announced its recent raise led by Yokogawa Electric Corp. last month, has officially moved to the Houston area. The company's new HQ is in Stafford. Alex Reed, co-founder and CEO of the company, joined InnovationMap for a Q&A about what led up to the move and the future of the company, which includes expanding into the life science field.

InnovationMap: Tell me about Fluence Analytics — what does the technology do and why did you decide to start the company?

Alex Reed: We have developed a patented technology that can optimize chemical production. We basically are able to measure what's happening in real time in a process. Imagine if you're baking a cake, and you follow this recipe and sometimes you get the cake you want, sometimes it's too dry, and sometimes it's not cooked enough. And so the polymers industry, for simplistic terms, has that type of an issue. You don't really know exactly where you're at your equipment behaves differently. Basically, what we're able to do is give them real-time information on what's happening as they're baking the cake so that every time they can get a perfect cake.

We have a software and hardware solution that we install in these plants to get these measurements so that our customers can optimize production — and they want to do that to improve their yield, reduce waste, increase safety, and improve quality. There are a lot of different reasons that companies are interested in our technology and we have managed to grow globally. We have customers in Asia, Europe, and the U.S.

We spun out of Tulane University. It's an interesting story because my dad is the inventor of the technology — he's a physics professor at Tulane. I grew up working in the lab with him literally since the age of 12, and I was super interested in technology and science and saw that he was working with all these chemical companies. They were always very interested in what he was working on. I got to the point where I realized that I didn't want to be a scientist — I was far more interested in the commercialization and how you go from lab to product. That transition is very difficult. So, I stepped into the role of the entrepreneur. We had the patents and technology for my dad, I had an excellent mentor, and then our other co-founder was a technical founder.

IM: When and why did you start considering an HQ move? 

AR: We raised our first institutional venture funding in April 2017. Up until that point, it was primarily working with customers and grant funding. We worked with actually a group that has an office here called Energy Innovation Capital. They came in and invested in us and supported us, and George Coyle joined our board.

So, we had that tie to Houston, and I was in Houston a lot because there was a concentration of partners and customers — and not just like chemical plant customers, but also technology and R&D centers. As we started to scale, we brought on some other investors — Mitsubishi Chemical, JSR Corp., and most recently Yokogawa Electric Corp., which has its North American headquarters in Sugar Land.

We started to just build momentum towards it. I'd say we first had the conversations pre-COVID and then COVID hit, and we'd kind of just stopped everything for a while, just to make sure we knew where the business was heading. We've made it through COVID fine and did well on coming out of it. Then we felt it was the right time to pick that thread back up. We knew it made sense. The labor pool is amazing here, and there's just so many reasons why we were looking at it. So then we just pulled the trigger.

IM: How did you decide on the Houston area? What drew you to Stafford?

AR: Initially, we had a little landing pad in the East End Maker Hub, so we got in there and they were awesome. We actually had started hiring remote people here in 2019 because we knew the move was going to happen at some point. We had a place for them to go work out of EEMH while we searched for a permanent facility. We connected with the Greater Houston Partnership, and they plugged us in to Houston Exponential, and they have been very good at introducing us to the right people. We just don't know the lay of the land to be honest, so they've been a great resource. We were looking originally on the northside of Houston, and then we saw the Stafford area. There's a huge concentration of similar type companies — automation, some software, some hardware. There were some tax advantages. We settled in the Stafford area and are very happy with the choice we made to end up here.

IM: I know you recently raised a $7.5M venture funding round. What does that funding mean for growth?

AR: Like any capital, the objective is to use it to grow. For us, "grow" has several different areas. One is the product. There's a very long roadmap of both hardware and software improvements that we want to make. So basically we're accelerating a lot of the things on our roadmap to do things like closed-loop control based on our data — imagine running a whole plant autonomously based on measurements that we're making. We're moving more and more toward that autonomous operation world and improving a lot of the actual underlying hardware, making the measurements, building out sales and marketing as we start to serve more and more customers. Product sales and marketing and customer success are the areas that we're scaling.

IM: As you grow your local team, what are you looking for?

AR: Field applications, software, some automation technicians, and more. We do have some life science applications. So, in addition to our core area on the chemical side, we have a product we've sold into biopharma, and so we want to grow some of that. We're actually hiring for a product manager for the life science side of the business. So, that one's a pretty unique opportunity and role.

IM: Considering your life science application, it seems like Houston is a good fit for that vertical as well, right?

AR: We're working with the Houston of today, but also the Houston of tomorrow, which is this life science play. The next phase is kind of following that innovation value chain. So, figuring out what's the R&D and manufacturing of these pharmaceuticals, and how you can attract more of those technology centers and factories to make the stuff here. If you look at the talent pool here, those resources are somewhat fungible with the resources that serve petrochemical and oil and gas.

This cross pollination I think actually could be quite an interesting differentiator for Houston if the city can build that critical mass. So yes, I think there is an opportunity for us to leverage this vision that Houston has for life science. Now, we'll still have to go to the coast to go to our customers, but I think talent pool, and eventually you might even have customers here. It's certainly feasible.

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This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Houston-based Corva, an AI-optimized analytics company, is in the process of hiring — a lot. Photo via corva.ai

Growing Houston energy tech company plans to hire 150 new employees this year

growing gains

While the oil and gas industry may be in store for sluggish growth in 2020, that's hardly the case for Houston-based energy tech startup Corva AI LLC.

Corva — which offers a real-time data analytics platform for drilling and completion (the stage when a well is prepared for production) — added 85 employees last year, mostly in Houston. And it's on track to make 150 new hires in 2020, including software developers, researchers, drilling engineers, and data analysts, says Courtney Diezi, the company's general manager. Two-thirds of this year's new hires will work in Houston, she says.

Diezi says the company's headcount currently stands at 120, with 100 employees in Houston and 20 in Ukraine.

Corva has expanded so much and so quickly that it outgrew its previous 11,000-square-foot office and is now at The Cannon, a coworking space and innovation hub in the Energy Corridor. It's set to move later this year to a new 40,000-square-foot space at The Cannon.

Founded in 2014 by CEO Ryan Dawson, Corva has raised just $3 million in outside funding to propel its growth.

"Our business has grown exponentially at the same pace as companies raising hundreds of millions in funding," Dawson says. "While the startup world has chased endless rounds of funding with the notion of either becoming a unicorn — or dying — we have focused on creating a company that cares deeply about our employees and a business that lasts 100 years."

Dawson describes Corva as the "modern brains" of drillings and completions. Oil and gas equipment sends millions of datapoints to Corva to help make complex decisions about drilling operations, she says. About 40 customers use Corva's technology.

In a 2019 news release, Dawson said Corva gauges its success "by the number of days we save on rigs, the costs we can quantifiably cut, and the number of catastrophic events we prevent." Corva's technology has saved millions of dollars for its customers and reduced the length of drilling projects by as many as three days, he said.

"Corva's challenge is to change the behavior of drillers who work for somebody else," the Journal of Petroleum Technology reported in 2019. "The fast-growing company has no shortage of users. Retaining those customers will require convincing oil companies that the real-time drilling data and analysis is creating enough value to justify the cost."

Corva's user-focused approach to developing technology helps attract and retain customers. Executives say they consider Corva a tech company that operates in the oil and gas sector rather than an oil and gas company that happens to develop software.

"Our software platform rivals Netflix and Twitter in terms of giant datasets and real-time processing," Diezi says. "Without a core expertise and founding team in software, we wouldn't be able to provide the amazing technology we do — it's too central to what we do. Corva is the perfect mixture of oil industry veterans and software whiz kids. Our customers love to work with us because we speak their language but provide world-class products solving hard problems."

As it continues to enlarge its workforce, Corva seeks to foster a workplace that embraces both oil industry veterans and software whiz kids.

"We want to be the most admired workplace in Houston, with a Google-like status both for our amazing products and our company culture," Diezi says.

This growing Houston company is providing industrial industries with smart analytics. Getty Images

Houston software company looks to grow its workforce internationally

Staffing up

A Houston-based analytics-focused company is gearing up for growth in 2019 and plans to staff up its headquarters and remote offices abroad.

Arundo Analytics Inc. brings industrial companies — which sometimes are slow to adopt brand-new technology — into the world of machine learning and advanced analytics to help boost revenue, cut costs and reduce risks.

The startup's enterprise software gives asset-heavy industrial businesses "a virtual window into their day-to-day operations," says Stuart Morstead, co-founder and chief operating officer of Arundo. Among the operations that benefit from software are equipment maintenance, safety, logistics and scheduling.

Morstead points out that most industrial companies that encounter issues with operations such as equipment maintenance "lack the data science and software capabilities to drive value from insights into their daily operations."

Arundo aims to solve that problem by incorporating machine learning and advanced analytics — the kind of innovations emanating from the likes of Amazon, Google, and IBM — into everyday business operations at industrial companies, says Morstead, a former partner at consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and a graduate of Rice University.

Aside from its broad enterprise software, Arundo supplies out-of-the-box applications that tackle individual industrial challenges like flow metering for the offshore oil and gas industry and monitoring the condition of equipment. The virtual cloud-based multiphase flow meter is sold as part of a software package from industrial technology giant ABB.

More than 50 of Arundo's estimated 110 employees work on that technology from the startup's headquarters in downtown Houston. To propel its growth, Arundo plans to add employees this year in Houston as well as its other offices in Canada, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, according to Morstead.

In 2016, Arundo graduated from Stanford University's StartX accelerator program. A year later, Arundo was named to the MIT STEX25 accelerator program by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Startup Exchange.

Since its founding in 2015, Arundo has raised more $35 million in capital, including a Series A round of $28 million that closed in the first half of 2018. Investors include Sundt AS, Stokke Industri, Horizon, Canica, Strømstangen, Arctic Fund Management, Stanford-StartX Fund and Northgate Partners.

Aside from drawing more funding in 2018, the startup set up several strategic partnerships designed to increase the adoption of Arundo's software in sectors such as oil and gas, manufacturing, shipping, construction and maritime. Among the new partners are Dell Technologies, DNV GL's Veracity platform and WorleyParsons.

Going forward, Morstead says Arundo aims to bring its software expertise, business prowess and "world-class data science" to even more industrial companies and their physical assets as part of the global Industrial Internet of Things sector. That market is projected to approach $1 trillion by 2025, up from $100 billion in 2016.

To be sure, Arundo is competing in a market that's rife with opportunity. Consulting firm Accenture estimates the IIoT market could add $14.2 trillion to the global economy by 2030.

"Arguably the biggest driver of productivity and growth in the next decade, the Industrial Internet of Things will accelerate the reinvention of sectors that account for almost two-thirds of world output," the Accenture report says.

Tor Jakob Ramsøy, founder and CEO of Arundo, certainly grasps the enormous potential of IIoT.

"Asset-heavy companies can no longer afford to make business decisions based on an incomplete view of their organization," Ramsøy, a former McKinsey partner, said in a 2018 news release. "By combining deep data and [artificial intelligence] knowledge with decades of cumulative experience in enterprise consulting, Arundo is ushering in a new era in IIoT."

Tracking performance

Courtesy of Arundo

Arundo's Condition & Performance Monitoring Software can easily be plugged into a company's system and track its equipment using cloud technology.

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Houston medical institutions launch $6M kidney research incubator

NIH funding

Institutions within Houston’s Texas Medical Center have launched the Houston Area Incubator for Kidney, Urologic and Hematologic Research Training (HAI-KUH) program. The incubator will be backed by $6.25 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health and aims to create a training pipeline for researchers.

HAI-KUH will include 58 investigators from Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, University of Houston, Houston Methodist Research Institute, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Rice University and Texas A&M University Institute of Biosciences and Technology. The program will fund six predoctoral students and six postdoctoral associates. Trainees will receive support in scientific research, professional development and networking.

According to the organizations, Houston has a high burden of kidney diseases, hypertension, sickle cell disease and other nonmalignant hematologic conditions. HAI-KUH will work to improve the health of patients by building a strong scientific workforce that leverages the team's biomedical research resources to develop research skills of students and trainees and prepare them for sustained and impactful careers. The funding comes through the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

The principal investigators of the project include Dr. Alison Bertuch, professor of pediatric oncology and molecular and human genetics at BCM; Peter Doris, professor and director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine Center for Human Genetics at UT Health; and Margaret Goodell, professor and chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Baylor.

“This new award provides unique collaborative training experiences that extend beyond the outstanding kidney, urology, and hematology research going on in the Texas Medical Center,” Doris said in a news release. “In conceiving this award, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases envisioned trainee development across the full spectrum of skills required for professional success.”

Jeffrey Rimer, a professor of Chemical Engineering, is a core investigator on the project and program director at UH. Rimer is known for his breakthroughs in using innovative methods in control crystals to help treat malaria and kidney stones. Other co-investigators include Dr. Wolfgang Winkelmeyer (Baylor), Oleh Pochynyuk (UTHealth), Dr. Rose Khavari (Houston Methodist) and Pamela Wenzel (UT Health).

“This new NIH-sponsored training program will enable us to recruit talented students and postdocs to work on these challenging areas of research,” Rimer added in a release.

6 Houston health tech startups making major advancements right now

meet the finalists

Home to leading hospitals, universities and health-focused incubators, Houston is a breeding ground for innovative medical technology and breakthroughs that can improve outcomes and lead to a better quality of life for patients.

The Health Tech Business category in our 2025 Houston Innovation Awards will honor an innovative startup within the health and medical technology sectors.

Six forward-thinking businesses have been named finalists for the 2025 award. They range from an end-of-life care company to others developing devices and systems for heart monitoring, sleep apnea, hearing loss and more.

Read more about these businesses, their innovative founders, and how they're shaping the future of health care below. Then join us at the Houston Innovation Awards on Nov. 13 at Greentown Labs, when the winner will be unveiled at our live awards ceremony.

Tickets are now on sale for this exclusive event celebrating all things Houston Innovation.

Bairitone Health

Bairitone Health is bringing anatomy imaging for sleep apnea to the home environment. The company's platform maps users' anatomy during natural sleep using a facial patch to determine the root cause of airway obstruction. It then offers effective therapies for each patient. The system is currently in the research and development phase and is being used in clinical trials and studies.

The company was founded in 2022 in the Texas Medical Center's Biodesign program by CEO Meagan Pitcher, CTO Onur Kilic and chief medical officer Britt Cross. It was a member of Activate Houston's inaugural cohort and has participated in numerous accelerators and incubators. It raised a pre-seed round last year of $435,000.

Corveus Medical

Corveus Medical has developed a novel catheter device that allows cardiologists to perform a splanchnic nerve ablation, restoring the pressure balance in patients with moderate heart failure. Its pre-FDA-approved, minimally invasive solution deactivates a nerve that has been demonstrated to be a root cause behind heart failure progression, which allows physicians to treat patients who have traditionally had few options.

The company, formerly known as Caridian Medical, was founded in 2021 by CEO Tyler Melton and CMO Ishan Kamat. It has participated in incubators such as TMC Biodesign, Y Combinator, MedTech Innovator and Fogarty Innovation and was named one of the 10 most promising life science companies at Texas Life Science Forum in 2022. The company says it will move toward validation and verification testing for its device in Q4 of this year.

FibroBiologics

Regenerative medicine company FibroBioligics uses fibroblasts, the body’s most common type of cell, rather than stem cells, to help grow new cells to repair tissue and modulate the immune system. The cell therapies offer treatments for chronic conditions such as degenerative disc disease, multiple sclerosis and non-healing wounds.

The publicly traded company was founded in 2021 by CEO Pete O'Heeron. It opened a new 10,000-square-foot Houston lab earlier this year to scale up research efforts and pave the way for in-house manufacturing. The company says it plans to launch its first clinical trial for diabetic foot ulcers soon, representing the transition of its fibroblast technology to the clinic setting.

Koda Health

Koda Health has developed an advance care planning platform (ACP) that allows users to document and share their care preferences, goals and advance directives for health systems. The web-based platform guides patients through values-based decisions with interactive tools and generates state-specific, legally compliant documents that integrate seamlessly with electronic health record systems. The company also added kidney action planning to its suite of services for patients with serious illnesses last year.

Koda Health was founded out of the TMC's Biodesign Fellowship in 2020 by CEO Tatiana Fofanova, chief medical officer Dr. Desh Mohan, and chief technology officer Katelin Cherry. The company raised a $7 million series A earlier this year, and also announced major partnerships and integrations with Epic, Guidehealth, Medical Home Network, Privia Health and others.

NanoEar

NanoEar has miniaturized hearing aid technology so that it can be implanted across the eardrum, allowing adults with age-related hearing loss to enjoy better sound quality than they would with behind-the-ear hearing aids.

Dr. Ron Moses, an ENT specialist and surgeon at Houston Methodist, developed the technology, and the company was founded in 2016 with CFO Willem Vermaat and COO Michael Moore. The company participated in the TMC Innovation Institute in 2016. It has issued nine U.S. patents and performed successful human cadaver and animal proof-of-concept experiments. Its next step is developing a prototype.

Wellysis USA

Wellysis USA Inc. works to detect heart rhythm disorders with its continuous ECG/EKG monitor with AI reporting. Its S-Patch cardiac monitor is designed for extended testing periods of up to 14 days on a single battery charge. The device weighs only 9 grams, is waterproof and designed to be comfortable to wear, and is considered to have a high detection rate for arrhythmias. It is ideally suited for patient-centric clinical trials to help physicians make diagnoses faster, cheaper and more conveniently.

It was established in Houston in 2023 and participated in the JLABS SFF Program the same year. It closed a $12 million series B last year. It was founded by CEO Young Juhn, CTO Rick Kim, CFO JungSoo Kim and chief strategy officer JoongWoo Kim.

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Houston university is at the top of the class in new college ranking

Top of the Class

Rice University is maintaining its reputation as one of the top colleges in the U.S., according to a new batch of rankings from WalletHub.

Rice topped WalletHub's 2026 lists comparing the best colleges and universities in Texas and the best universities in the South. The private institution also ranked as the 9th best university in the country, three spots lower than its 2024 ranking.

The personal finance website's experts analyzed nearly 800 colleges and universities in the U.S. using 30 key metrics, including factors like student-faculty ratios, graduation rates, campus safety, and many more.

Rice was ranked across seven major categories in the report and scored highly for its faculty resources (No. 10), student educational outcomes (No. 12), student selectivity (No. 16), student career outcomes (No. 26), and campus experience (No. 46).

The only two categories Rice lagged behind in were campus safety (No. 576) and cost and financing (No. 700). U.S. News & World Report says tuition and fees at Rice can add up to more than $65,000 per year for in-state students, with the total cost soaring to nearly $84,000 when factoring in the price for housing, food, books and supplies, transportation, and personal expenses.

In addition to topping WalletHub's rankings, Rice has also claimed top spots in other prestigious lists by U.S. News, Forbes, The Princeton Review, and more. Rice's revered graduate schools – including the MBA program at the Jones Graduate School of Business and Brown School of Engineering and Computing – are also among the best in the country, according to U.S. News and The Princeton Review.

Locally, University of Houston also ranked among the statewide top 10 and ranked as the 268th best university in the U.S. for 2026. In the regional rankings of best universities in the South, UH ranked 52nd on the list

The 10 best colleges and universities in Texas for 2026 are:

  • No. 1 – Rice University, Houston
  • No. 2 – The University of Texas at Austin
  • No. 3 – Trinity University, San Antonio
  • No. 4 – Texas A&M University-College Station
  • No. 5 – Texas Christian University, Fort Worth
  • No. 6 – Austin College, Sherman
  • No. 7 – Southwestern University, Georgetown
  • No. 8 – University of Dallas
  • No. 9 – The University of Texas at Dallas
  • No. 10 – University of Houston
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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.
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