University of Houston spinout's smartphone COVID-19 test to head to market

Pandemic innovation

Luminostics, which was founded out of a lab at UH, received NIH grant to produce its COVID-19 rapid antigen test. Photo courtesy of Luminostics

A Silicon Valley startup with Houston roots is helping tackle the COVID-19 pandemic with its smartphone-based coronavirus test.

Milpitas, California-based Luminostics, a University of Houston spinout, is producing millions of its Clip COVID Rapid Antigen Test for U.S. consumers after receiving emergency authorization for the product in December. The emergency approval closely followed the National Institutes of Health awarding a $26.1 million contract to Luminostics to speed up development of the coronavirus test. According to a news release from UH, Luminostics is working on an affordable next generation hardware system to reach the mass over-the-counter market at scale.

Chemical engineers and UH alumni Bala Raja, the CEO, and Andrew Paterson, the chief technology officer, began forming their company in the UH lab of Richard Willson, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and professor of biochemical and biophysical sciences.

The technology developed in the UH lab aims to equip consumers with rapid self-diagnostic tests for the flu, HIV, herpes, and other conditions by detecting the presence of bacteria, viruses, small molecules, hormones, and proteins. But Raja and Paterson put that strategy on hold last year and pivoted to re-engineering their technology for COVID-19 testing. The result: the Clip COVID Rapid Antigen Test.

"When we realized that COVID wasn't just a bad flu and that it was actually gonna go crazy and affect as many people as it has, we decided that everything we've done could be very quickly repurposed to make two different tests," Raja told Inc. magazine in April.

UH alumni Andrew Paterson and Bala Raja are co-founders of Luminostics. Photo via UH.edu

As UH explains, the Clip COVID test relies on a nasal swab, a smartphone clip, and glow-in-the-dark nanoparticles to detect a coronavirus infection within 30 minutes. In the phone, an image processor measures the intensity of the luminescence signal. If the signal is strong enough, the result is positive. If it's weak, the result is negative.

"We live in a world where you can have all your basic necessities delivered to your home through an app, and yet this pandemic has exposed how far behind the diagnostics industry lags compared to consumer technology and the convenience economy," Paterson tells UH.

Funding from the National Institutes of Health, venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, investment firm Lynette Capital, and startup accelerator Y Combinator has helped support the Clip COVID Rapid Antigen Test. The startup entered the Y Combinator program in 2016, a year after Raja and Paterson established Luminostics.

In April 2020, French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi said it was exploring a collaboration with Luminostics on the COVID-19 test.

"The diagnostics industry is saturated with products that cater to big, centralized labs or testing in the doctor's office," Paterson says. "There are many applications where it does make sense to do testing in a centralized lab, but there are dozens of other applications where there should be home-tests and there are not, because few companies have tried to take on the technical and regulatory challenges with developing home-testing."

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Texas Space Commission doles out $5.8 million to Houston companies

On A Mission

Two Houston-area companies have landed more than $5.8 million in funding from the Texas Space Commission.

The commission granted up to $5.5 million to Houston-based Axiom Space and up to $347,196 to Conroe-based FluxWorks.

The two-year-old commission previously awarded $95.3 million to 14 projects. A little over $34 million remains in the commission-managed Space Exploration and Aeronautics Research Fund.

Axiom Space, a commercial spaceflight company, said the new funding will go toward the development of its orbital data center capabilities. By the end of this year, Axiom plans to launch two free-flying nodes in low-Earth orbit to support its orbital data center operations. More nodes are set to go online in the coming years.

“Axiom Space is actively evaluating how our [orbital data center] architecture can enhance critical U.S. capabilities, including the proposed Golden Dome missile defense architecture,” Jason Aspiotis, global director of in-space data and security at Axiom, said in a news release. “In this context, real-time, around-the-clock availability, secure orbital processing, and AI-driven autonomy are vital for ensuring mission success.”

Founded in 2021, FluxWorks provides magnetic gear technology that was developed at Texas A&M University.

In 2024, FluxWorks was one of two startups to receive the Technology in Space Prize, funded by Boeing and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), which manages the International Space Station National Laboratory.

FluxWorks is testing the performance of magnetic gear in microgravity environments, such as the International Space Station.

“Gearboxes aim to reduce the mass of motors required in a variety of applications; however, the lubricant needed to make them work properly is not designed for use in extreme environments like space,” according to a 2024 news release about the Technology in Space Prize. “Magnetic gears do not require lubricant, making them an appealing alternative.”

The Texas Space Commission granted $25 million to Houston aerospace companies Starlab Space and Intuitive Machines earlier this year. Read more here.

3 Houston startups named most innovative in Texas by LexisNexis

report card

Three Houston companies claimed spots on LexisNexis's 10 Most Innovative Startups in Texas report, with two working in the geothermal energy space.

Sage Geosystems claimed the No. 3 spot on the list, and Fervo Energy followed closely behind at No. 5. Fintech unicorn HighRadius rounded out the list of Houston companies at No. 8.

LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions compiled the report. It was based on each company's Patent Asset Index, a proprietary metric from LexisNexis that identifies the strength and value of each company’s patent assets based on factors such as patent quality, geographic scope and size of the portfolio.

Houston tied with Austin, each with three companies represented on the list. Caris Life Sciences, a biotechnology company based in Dallas, claimed the top spot with a Patent Asset Index more than 5 times that of its next competitor, Apptronik, an Austin-based AI-powered humanoid robotics company.

“Texas has always been fertile ground for bold entrepreneurs, and these innovative startups carry that tradition forward with strong businesses based on outstanding patent assets,” Marco Richter, senior director of IP analytics and strategy for LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions, said in a release. “These companies have proven their innovation by creating the most valuable patent portfolios in a state that’s known for game-changing inventions and cutting-edge technologies.We are pleased to recognize Texas’ most innovative startups for turning their ideas into patented innovations and look forward to watching them scale, disrupt, and thrive on the foundation they’ve laid today.”

This year's list reflects a range in location and industry. Here's the full list of LexisNexis' 10 Most Innovative Startups in Texas, ranked by patent portfolios.

  1. Caris (Dallas)
  2. Apptronik (Austin)
  3. Sage Geosystems (Houston)
  4. HiddenLayer (Austin)
  5. Fervo Energy (Houston)
  6. Plus One Robotics (San Antonio)
  7. Diligent Robotics (Austin)
  8. HighRadius (Houston)
  9. LTK (Dallas)
  10. Eagle Eye Networks (Austin)

Sage Geosystems has partnered on major geothermal projects with the United States Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Unit, the U.S. Air Force and Meta Platforms. Sage's 3-megawatt commercial EarthStore geothermal energy storage facility in Christine, Texas, was expected to be completed by the end of last year.

Fervo Energy fully contracted its flagship 500 MW geothermal development, Cape Station, this spring. Cape Station is currently one of the world’s largest enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) developments, and the station will begin to deliver electricity to the grid in 2026. The company was recently named North American Company of the Year by research and consulting firm Cleantech Group and came in at No. 6 on Time magazine and Statista’s list of America’s Top GreenTech Companies of 2025. It's now considered a unicorn, meaning its valuation as a private company has surpassed $1 billion.

Meanwhile, HighRadius announced earlier this year that it plans to release a fully autonomous finance platform for the "office of the CFO" by 2027. The company reached unicorn status in 2020.

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This article originally appeared on Energy Capital HTX.

UH student earns prestigious award for cancer vaccine research

up-and-comer

Cole Woody, a biology major in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Houston, has been awarded a Barry Goldwater Scholarship, becoming the first sophomore in UH history to earn the prestigious prize for research in natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.

Woody was recognized for his research on developing potential cancer vaccines through chimeric RNAs. The work specifically investigates how a vaccine can more aggressively target cancers.

Woody developed the MHCole Pipeline, a bioinformatic tool that predicts peptide-HLA binding affinities with nearly 100 percent improvement in data processing efficiency. The MHCole Pipeline aims to find cancer-specific targets and develop personalized vaccines. Woody is also a junior research associate at the UH Sequencing Core and works in Dr. Steven Hsesheng Lin’s lab at MD Anderson Cancer Center.

“Cole’s work ethic and dedication are unmatched,” Preethi Gunaratne, director of the UH Sequencing Core and professor of Biology & Biochemistry at NSM, said in a news release. “He consistently worked 60 to 70 hours a week, committing himself to learning new techniques and coding the MHCole pipeline.”

Woody plans to earn his MD-PhD and has been accepted into the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Early Access to Research Training (HEART) program. According to UH, recipients of the Goldwater Scholarship often go on to win various nationally prestigious awards.

"Cole’s ability to independently design and implement such a transformative tool at such an early stage in his career demonstrates his exceptional technical acumen and creative problem-solving skills, which should go a long way towards a promising career in immuno-oncology,” Gunaratne added in the release.

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