Houston-based personal training company partners with NASA for out-of-this-world opportunity

Next level

Jay Sutaria's personal training business is partnering with NASA to provide clients training fit for an astronaut. Blake Hobson/ST&F

Not everyone one can be an astronaut, but you might get to use their equipment. Sutaria Training & Fitness LLC, a Houston-based personal training company, is teaming up with one of the leading biomechanics that contracts with NASA that aims to provide exclusive access to astronaut training equipment to clients.

Jay Sutaria, founder and lead trainer, says that the equipment at NASA, called the force plate, shows how much power a client's body is producing in specific areas and how that power drops over time. The data produced by these machines can help trainers customize and tweak workouts for each client to take training a step further.

The Advanced Resistive Exercise Device, or ARED, works with the force plates Sutaria uses, and according to NASA's website, ARED includes force sensors located in the platform that are able to record force in three dimensions.

Sutaria and his contact at NASA recently tested the equipment with the Chinese olympic boxing team to see how it can be applied to workouts at NASA's location in Clear Lake.

"It's exclusive access to the equipment that is not available openly in Houston," said Sutaria. "NASA is a reference for us to become better trainers."

Sutaria founded his company in 2011 while he was a student at the University of Houston, and the company now operates with two trainers. His clients include professional athletes such as D.J. Augustin (Orlando Magic, NBA); and Tim Frazier (New Orleans Pelicans, NBA), however, Sutaria and his team offer professional personal training services to any type of athlete.

He says that his passion towards healing sports injuries stems from a back injury he suffered from throughout high school that greatly affected his performance. Sutaria had gone to physical therapy to repair the injury, but was trained incorrectly, which lead to more pain. After studying kinesiology and exercise science, he was able to fix his own chronic pain and help others like him.

"When I went into college with this physical therapy mindset, I wanted to help people get out of pain," Sutaria said.

In addition to his degree, Sutaria and all of the trainers on his team have diplomas from the National Personal Training Institute. Sutaria says that the trainers approach is data and science driven, focusing on a series of fundamental exercise movement and coaching.

"We've already helped hundreds of people, if you can help one person it's good for your community," said Sutaria.

ST&F is working to strengthen corporate partnerships, where the personal training company would offer mobility stretching training and nutritional guidance. He wants to open a gym this year; the company currently offers services out of Next Level Fitness in West University. The new gym will likely contain special equipment used at NASA, taking the collaboration even further. For now, clients that are interested in testing the equipment will have to travel to Clear Lake.

In addition to the permanent location, services are available in the Bellaire, River Oaks, Galleria, Heights, Sugar Land, Spring, Midtown, and Downtown neighborhoods, according to the website, and while Sutaria isn't writing off plans to expand to other cities, the company will remain focused on Houston for now.

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Rice University researchers unveil new model that could sharpen MRI scans

MRI innovation

Researchers at Rice University, in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have developed a new model that could lead to sharper imaging and safer diagnostics using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI.

In a study recently published in The Journal of Chemical Physics, the team of researchers showed how they used the Fokker-Planck equation to better understand how water molecules respond to contrast agents in a process known as “relaxation.” Previous models only approximated how water molecules relaxed around contrasting agents. However, through this new model, known as the NMR eigenmodes framework, the research team has uncovered the “full physical equations” to explain the process.

“The concept is similar to how a musical chord consists of many notes,” Thiago Pinheiro, the study’s first author, a Rice doctoral graduate in chemical and biomolecular engineering and postdoctoral researcher in the chemical sciences division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said in a news release. “Previous models only captured one or two notes, while ours picks up the full harmony.”

According to Rice, the findings could lead to the development and application of new contrast agents for clearer MRIs in medicine and materials science. Beyond MRIs, the NMR relaxation method could also be applied to other areas like battery design and subsurface fluid flow.

“In the present paper, we developed a comprehensive theory to interpret those previous molecular dynamics simulations and experimental findings,” Dilipkumar Asthagiri, a senior computational biomedical scientist in the National Center for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said in the release. ”The theory, however, is general and can be used to understand NMR relaxation in liquids broadly.”

The team has also made its code available as open source to encourage its adoption and further development by the broader scientific community.

“By better modeling the physics of nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation in liquids, we gain a tool that doesn’t just predict but also explains the phenomenon,” Walter Chapman, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice, added in the release. “That is crucial when lives and technologies depend on accurate scientific understanding.”

The study was backed by The Ken Kennedy Institute, Rice Creative Ventures Fund, Robert A. Welch Foundation and Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Luxury transportation startup connects Houston with Austin and San Antonio

On The Road Again

Houston business and leisure travelers have a luxe new way to hop between Texas cities. Transportation startup Shutto has launched luxury van service connecting San Antonio, Austin, and Houston, offering travelers a comfortable alternative to flying or long-haul rideshare.

Bookings are now available Monday through Saturday with departure times in the morning and evening. One-way fares range from $47-$87, putting Shutto in a similar lane to Dallas-based Vonlane, which also offers routes from Houston to Austin and San Antonio.

Shutto enters the market at a time when highway congestion is a hotter topic than ever. With high-speed rail still years in the future, its model aims to provide fast, predictable service at commuter prices.

The startup touts an on-time departure guarantee and a relaxed, intimate ride. Only 12 passengers fit inside each Mercedes Sprinter van, equipped with Wi-Fi and leather seating. And each route includes a pit stop at roadside favorite Buc-ee's.

In announcing the launch, founder and CEO Alberto Salcedo called the company a new category in Texas mobility.

“We are bringing true disruptive mobility to Texas: faster and more convenient than flying (no security lines, no delays), more comfortable and exclusive than the bus or train, and up to 70 percent cheaper than private transfers or Uber Black,” Salcedo said in a release.

“Whether you’re commuting for business, visiting family, exploring Texas wineries, or doing a taco tour in San Antonio, Shutto makes traveling between these cities as easy and affordable as riding inside the city."

Beyond the scheduled routes, Shutto offers private, customizable trips anywhere in the country, a service it expects will appeal to corporate retreat planners, party planners, and tourists alike.

In Houston, the service picks up and drops off near the Galleria at the Foam Coffee & Kitchen parking lot, 5819 Richmond Ave.. In San Antonio, it is located at La Panadería Bakery’s parking lot at 8305 Broadway. In Austin, the location is the Pershing East Café parking lot at 2501 E. Fifth St.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Houston-area lab grows with focus on mobile diagnostics and predictive medicine

mobile medicine

When it comes to healthcare, access can be a matter of life and death. And for patients in skilled nursing facilities, assisted living or even their own homes, the ability to get timely diagnostic testing is not just a convenience, it’s a necessity.

That’s the problem Principle Health Systems (PHS) set out to solve.

Founded in 2016 in Clear Lake, Texas, PHS began as a conventional laboratory but quickly pivoted to mobile diagnostics, offering everything from core blood work and genetic testing to advanced imaging like ultrasounds, echocardiograms, and X-rays.

“We were approached by a group in a local skilled nursing facility to provide services, and we determined pretty quickly there was a massive need in this area,” says James Dieter, founder, chairman and CEO of PHS. “Turnaround time is imperative. These facilities have an incredibly sick population, and of course, they lack mobility to get the care that they need.”

What makes PHS unique is not only what they do, but where they do it. While they operate one of the largest labs serving skilled nursing facilities in the state, their mobile teams go wherever patients are, whether that’s a nursing home, a private residence or even a correctional facility.

Diagnostics, Dieter says, are at the heart of medical decision-making.

“Seventy to 80 percent of all medical decisions are made from diagnostic results in lab and imaging,” he says. “The diagnostic drives the doctor’s or the provider’s next move. When we recognized a massive slowdown in lab results, we had to innovate to do it faster.”

Innovation at PHS isn’t just about speed; it’s about accessibility and precision.

Chris Light, COO, explains: “For stat testing, we use bedside point-of-care instruments. Our phlebotomists take those into the facilities, test at the bedside, and get results within minutes, rather than waiting days for results to come back from a core lab.”

Scaling a mobile operation across multiple states isn’t simple, but PHS has expanded into nine states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arizona. Their model relies on licensed mobile phlebotomists, X-ray technologists and sonographers, all trained to provide high-level care outside traditional hospital settings.

The financial impact for patients is significant. Instead of ambulance rides and ER visits costing thousands, PHS services often cost just a fraction, sometimes only tens or hundreds of dollars.

“Traditionally, without mobile diagnostics, the patient would be loaded into a transportation vehicle, typically an ambulance, and taken to a hospital,” Dieter says. “Our approach is a fraction of the cost but brings care directly to the patients.”

The company has also embraced predictive and personalized medicine, offering genetic tests that guide medication decisions and laboratory tests that predict cognitive decline from conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s.

“We actively look for complementary services to improve patient outcomes,” Dieter says. “Precision medicine and predictive testing have been a great value-add for our providers.”

Looking to the future, PHS sees mobile healthcare as part of a larger trend toward home-based care.

“There’s an aging population that still lives at home with caretakers,” Dieter explains. “We go into the home every day, whether it’s an apartment, a standalone home, or assisted living. The goal is to meet patients where they are and reduce the need for hospitalization.”

Light highlighted another layer of innovation: predictive guidance.

“We host a lot of data, and labs and imaging drive most treatment decisions,” Light says. “We’re exploring how to deploy diagnostics immediately based on results, eliminating hours of delay and keeping patients healthier longer.”

Ultimately, innovation at PHS isn’t just about technology; it’s about equity.

“There’s an 11-year life expectancy gap between major metro areas and rural Texas,” Dieter says. “Our innovation has been leveling the field, so everyone has access to high-quality diagnostics and care, regardless of where they live.”

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