3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Jon Nordby of Anthropy Partners, Benjamin Musher of BCM, and Mark Semmelbeck of A Better Meal. Photos courtesy

Editor's note: Every week, I introduce you to a handful of Houston innovators to know recently making headlines with news of innovative technology, investment activity, and more. This week's batch includes a health tech innovator, an investor, and a startup CEO.

Jon Nordby, managing director of Anthropy Partners

Jon Nordby's career has been focused on cultivating a culture for innovation, and now he's focused on human potential technology opportunities. Photo courtesy

In his role overseeing startup accelerators for MassChallenge, Jon Nordby started noticing one industry vertical stood out in terms of success and opportunities: Human potential. Now, Nordby is a founding member of an investment firm looking for those opportunities.

Nordby, who served in various leadership roles at MassChallenge — including managing director and head of ecosystems — said he started realizing the opportunities within the organization's space and sports tech programs.

"What we realized over a couple of years running the program was that sports tech as a theme was too limiting," Nordby says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "We were finding really great technologies, but we were limited at the market size of teams and leagues to deploy those technologies."

"Over the course of that program, we found that the things that were related more to human health and performance tended to out perform all of the other things related to sports tech — like media, entertainment, gambling," Nordby continues. "Still really great markets for those technologies, but we found a lot more traction for human performance." Read more.

Benjamin Musher, professor at Baylor College of Medicine and medical director of medical oncology at the Duncan Cancer Center McNair Campus

The new center is specifically designed to allow patients to be on the cutting edge of testing brand-new therapies that could save their lives. Photo via BCM

Cancer treatment in Houston just became even more promising — and forward-thinking.

Phase 1 clinical trials are necessary to prove the efficacy in humans of treatments that have appeared promising in lab trials. In the name of cancer-fighting innovation, Baylor College of Medicine’s Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center has launched the Albert and Margaret Alkek Foundation Center for Experimental Therapeutics.

The new center is specifically designed to allow patients to be on the cutting edge of testing brand-new therapies that could save their lives.

“Clinical trials are critical for advancing the field of oncology and improving outcomes for cancer patients. Phase 1 trials are the first step in bringing innovative therapies to the clinic,” says Dr. Benjamin Musher, Barry S. Smith endowed professor at Baylor and medical director of medical oncology at the Duncan Cancer Center McNair Campus, in a news release. “Our new program will build on the success of previous phase 1 trials at Baylor and provide robust infrastructure to offer more clinical trial opportunities to our patients.” Read more.

Mark Semmelbeck, founder and CEO of A Better Meal

A Better Meal — a new app from a Houston founder — gives you all the tools you need to make healthier food choices. Photo courtesy

After many years of living to eat, a large swath of American society is now facilitating a seismic shift to the healthier alternative, eating to live.

But here’s the rub: eating healthy is confusing, time consuming and, unfortunately, oftentimes pricey.

So, anyone that can come in and cut through the healthy eating machine can carve out a necessary niche in the marketplace.

Enter Houstonian Mark Semmelbeck, founder and CEO of A Better Meal, a platform created to help busy families plan healthy meals easier and to make gradual improvements to their health and well-being.

“My vision is to use rapidly expanding AI technology together with the knowledge and wisdom of an active community to take the stress out of meal planning and improving nutrition,” says Semmelbeck, a seasoned oil and gas executive with over 30 years of experience in founding companies. “While developing the technology for the app, my daughter gave me two beautiful grandkids who both have significant food allergies. Combine that with the fact I now have five cardiac stents and the significance of eating well while paying attention to the details has only grown in importance.” Read more.

BrainLM is now well-trained enough to use to fine-tune a specific task and to ask questions in other studies. Photo via Getty Images

Houston researchers create AI model to tap into how brain activity relates to illness

brainiac

Houston researchers are part of a team that has created an AI model intended to understand how brain activity relates to behavior and illness.

Scientists from Baylor College of Medicine worked with peers from Yale University, University of Southern California and Idaho State University to make Brain Language Model, or BrainLM. Their research was published as a conference paper at ICLR 2024, a meeting of some of deep learning’s greatest minds.

“For a long time we’ve known that brain activity is related to a person’s behavior and to a lot of illnesses like seizures or Parkinson’s,” Dr. Chadi Abdallah, associate professor in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor and co-corresponding author of the paper, says in a press release. “Functional brain imaging or functional MRIs allow us to look at brain activity throughout the brain, but we previously couldn’t fully capture the dynamic of these activities in time and space using traditional data analytical tools.

"More recently, people started using machine learning to capture the brain complexity and how it relates it to specific illnesses, but that turned out to require enrolling and fully examining thousands of patients with a particular behavior or illness, a very expensive process,” Abdallah continues.

Using 80,000 brain scans, the team was able to train their model to figure out how brain activities related to one another. Over time, this created the BrainLM brain activity foundational model. BrainLM is now well-trained enough to use to fine-tune a specific task and to ask questions in other studies.

Abdallah said that using BrainLM will cut costs significantly for scientists developing treatments for brain disorders. In clinical trials, it can cost “hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said, to enroll numerous patients and treat them over a significant time period. By using BrainLM, researchers can enroll half the subjects because the AI can select the individuals most likely to benefit.

The team found that BrainLM performed successfully in many different samples. That included predicting depression, anxiety and PTSD severity better than other machine learning tools that do not use generative AI.

“We found that BrainLM is performing very well. It is predicting brain activity in a new sample that was hidden from it during the training as well as doing well with data from new scanners and new population,” Abdallah says. “These impressive results were achieved with scans from 40,000 subjects. We are now working on considerably increasing the training dataset. The stronger the model we can build, the more we can do to assist with patient care, such as developing new treatment for mental illnesses or guiding neurosurgery for seizures or DBS.”

For those suffering from neurological and mental health disorders, BrainLM could be a key to unlocking treatments that will make a life-changing difference.

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Abbas Rana of BCM, Rebecca C. Vaught of Van Heron Labs, and Patrick Scateni of Hypertec. Photos courtesy

3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

Editor's note: Welcome to another Monday edition of Innovators to Know. Today I'm introducing you to three Houstonians to read up about — three individuals behind recent innovation and startup news stories in Houston as reported by InnovationMap. Learn more about them and their recent news below by clicking on each article.

Abbas Rana, associate professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine

The NIH grant goes toward TransplantAI's work developing more precise models for heart and lung transplantation. Photo via BCM

The National Institute of Health has bestowed a Houston medtech company with a $2.2 million Fast-Track to Phase 2 award. InformAI will use the money for the product development and commercialization of its AI-enabled organ transplant informatics platform.

TransplantAI solves that problem, as well as organ scarcity and inefficiency in allocation of the precious resource.

The NIH grant goes toward developing more precise models for heart and lung transplantation (kidney and liver algorithms are further along in development thanks to a previous award from the National Science Foundation), as well as Phase 2 efforts to fully commercialize TransplantAI.

"There is an urgent need for improved and integrated predictive clinical insights in solid organ transplantation, such as for real-time assessment of waitlist mortality and the likelihood of successful post-transplantation outcomes," according to the grant’s lead clinical investigator, Abbas Rana, associate professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. Read more.

Rebecca C. Vaught, founder and CEO of Van Heron Labs

Van Heron Labs, founded at TMC, raised a $1.1 million seed round led by FoodLabs. Photo via LinkedIn

A biotech company that was founded at the Texas Medical Center in Houston has raised fresh funding to support its goal of innovating new technologies for a healthier humanity.

Van Heron Labs, based in Huntsville, Alabama, raised a $1.1 million seed round led by FoodLabs, a European investor and venture studio for food, health, and climate. The startup taps into genomics, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology to improve how cells are cultured and harnessed with the mission to address critical industrial and global challenges with biotechnology.

“Van Heron Labs looks forward to using the generous support and funding from FoodLabs to advance our goal of making biological innovation better, faster, and cheaper," Rebecca C. Vaught, founder and CEO of Van Heron Labs, says in a news release. "By fueling the new bio-economy, we feel that our customers can optimize their systems and bring technologies to overcome critical global challenges to market." Read more.

Patrick Scateni, vice president of global sales of Hypertec

The hardware upgrades more than “double the effective horsepower of DUG’s Houston data center.” Photo via LinkedIn

An Australia-based company has launched a major upgrade of its Houston data center with sustainability in mind.

DUG Technology announced it's increased the company’s high performance computing (HPC) capabilities and also reinforced its commitment to sustainable innovative technology. The company announced its latest investment in 1500 new AMD EPYCTM Genoa servers, which has 192 cores and 1.5 terabytes of DDR5 memory each. Quebec-based IT solution company Hypertec provided the immersion-born hardware.

“DUG’s decision highlights the unmatched technological advancements and superior performance of Hypertec immersion-born products, which are setting a new benchmark in the industry,” Hypertec’s Patrick Scateni, vice president of global sales says in a news release. Read more.

TRISH’s Diversity Partnership Solicitation Program selected two research teams to receive funding and support. Photo via BCM.edu

Houston space health organization announces new diversity-focused grant recipients

diversifying space

A local organization announced two newly funded partnerships to advance research and innovation within space health.

The Translational Research Institute for Space Health, or TRISH, at Baylor College of Medicine has announced — along with partner organizations Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — $300,000 in funding for teams at Texas State University and the University of Florida.

The two schools have been named awardees of TRISH’s Diversity Partnership Solicitation Program that was founded to support TRISH’s ongoing commitment to increasing engagement from underrepresented groups in the field of space health research.

“We go to space to improve life everywhere, and we must do so representing everyone,” says Dr. Asha S. Collins, chair of TRISH’s Diversity Advisory Board, in a news release. “The members of TRISH’s Diversity Advisory Board helped select two strong partners through our Diversity Partnership Program, and their work will move us closer to achieving that reality for the future of space exploration for all.”

The two projects that were selected for the program include:

  • B-SURE: Boosting Spaceflight Underrepresented Researcher Equity:
    • Principal Investigator: Dr. Rachael Seidler, University of Florida
    • Co-Investigators: Drs. Josephine Allen and Christine Wegner, University of Florida; Dr. Ana Diaz Artiles, Texas A&M University.
    • Dr. Rachael Seidler and her University of Florida team is partnered with Texas A&M University to survey the field and build a database of underrepresented researchers interested in pursuing space health research and a second database of leaders in this field open to new collaborators and mentorship.
  • Lyndon B. Johnson Institute for STEM Education and Research Space Health Inclusion Partnership
    • Principal Investigator: Dr. Kristina Collins, Texas State University
    • Co-Investigators and Collaborators: Drs. Leslie Huling, Barbie Buckner and Sara Torres, Deepika Sangam, Texas State University.
    • Dr. Collins and her team will use Texas State's existing virtual education tools to launch a set of novel space health content with digital badges and certifications.

Each of the projects were selected for "their innovative means of facilitating underrepresented researcher engagement," per the news release. Both teams will establish a cohort of underrepresented researchers dedicated to innovating future applications for space health research funding.

TRISH is funded by NASA’s Human Research Program and seeks both early stage and translation-ready research and technology to protect and improve the health and performance of space explorers. Last month, TRISH released a free-to-watch documentary on space health.

Baylor College of Medicine hosted U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (TX-29) for a check presentation. Photo courtesy of BCM

Houston institution receives $1.1M for long-COVID clinic

research funding

A new funding project that's a part of the Bipartisan Omnibus Appropriations Bill doled out over $10 million to health care institutions — and a Houston initiative is cashing in on a chunk of that funding.

Baylor College of Medicine and Harris Health’s long-COVID care clinics received $1.1 million from the the Congressional Community Project Funding program. U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (TX-29) attended the check presentation of the funding, as did Harris Health CEO Dr. Esmaeil Porsa, BCM President, CEO, and Executive Dean Dr. Paul Klotman, and Regional Director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Sima Ladjevardian.

Long-COVID symptoms, which are categorized by any level of severity of the disease, can affect organ systems such as the heart, lungs, or brain, and include persistent shortness of breath, brain fog or anxiety. BCM started post-COVID treatment initiatives in 2021.

The organization's long-COVID care facilities will be expanding to Harris Health’s Strawberry Clinic located in East Harris County in the 29th Congressional District. Baylor's Institute for Clinical and Translational Research experts will also work to develop, maintain, and analyze a COVID-19 database.

“Rep Garcia was instrumental in guiding this project through to its approval,” says Klotman in a news release. “She understands the health disparities of her district and the greater Houston community and spearheaded efforts for the BCM program’s inclusion in the Appropriations Bill.”

Garcia, according to the release, is responsible for spearheading the effort for nine Houston area community projects that are currently being funding.

"In my district we know we have a high rate of COVID and we know we will have a high long-COVID impact," says Rep. Garcia. "It is important to support care and research because it is impacting their quality of life and it is impacting their ability to work. The long-COVID treatment and research projects going on here at Baylor are some of the best. We are doing the work, we are doing the research, and we will continue to do it together."

NASA has renewed its support for Baylor College of Medicine's Translational Research Institute for Space Health. Photo courtesy of NASA

Houston research organization receives renewal from NASA and millions in funding for space health projects

new funding

Baylor College of Medicine's Translational Research Institute for Space Health, or TRISH, was granted renewal from NASA this week, which will allow the organization to continue to conduct biomedical research geared at protecting astronauts in deep space through 2028.

According to a statement, NASA reviewed TRISH in December 2020 ahead of the five year mark of its cooperative agreement with BCM's Center for Space Medicine. NASA opted to continue the partnership and now TRISH will receive additional funding of up to $134.6 million from 2022 to 2028.

"NASA has received outstanding value from our bold approach to sourcing and advancing space health research and technologies," institute director Dorit Donoviel, said in a statement. "We are proud to be NASA's partner in its human space exploration mission and to be supporting the research necessary to create new frontiers in healthcare that will benefit all humans."

The institute will focus its efforts on Mars exploration missions in the next six years and has been given three main objectives, according to the release:

  • To build strategic partnerships that will increase the volume of available biometric data on the impact of space travel on health and astronaut performance
  • To build a digital platform that simulates the spaceflight environment and will allow researchers to model and test new health technologies on Earth
  • To develop tissue chip technology that will allow astronauts to place a variety of human cells in lunar orbit during the NASA Artemis research missions to track the effects of space radiation and microgravity on humans

Since TRISH was founded in 2016 it has led the charge in space health research and has partnered with and provided grants to an array of innovative startups to do so.

In 2020 is granted Houston-based Z3VR $50,000 to explore the ways virtual reality can boost physical and mental health among astronauts and it has funded several projects surrounding space radiation levels.

At the time of 2020 review, TRISH had developed and transitioned 34 completed astronaut health and protection projects to NASA and had connected 415 first-time NASA researchers with opportunities to develop space health solutions.

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Houston energy tech startup Molecule closes series B funding round

Big Bang

Houston-based energy trading risk management (ETRM) software company Molecule has completed a successful series B round for an undisclosed amount, according to a July 16 release from the company.

The raise was led by Sundance Growth, a California-based software growth equity firm.

Sameer Soleja, founder and CEO of Molecule, said in the release that the funding will allow the company to "double down on product innovation, grow our team, and reach even more markets."

Molecule closed a $12 million Series A round in 2021, led by Houston-based Mercury Fund, and has since seen significant growth. The company, which was founded in 2012, has expanded its customer base across the U.S., U.K., Europe, Canada and South America, according to the release.

Additionally, it has launched two new modules of its software platform. Its Hive module, which debuted in 2022, enables clients to manage their energy portfolio and renewable credits together in one scalable platform. It also introduced Elektra, an add-on for the power market to its platform, which allows for complex power market trading.

"Four years ago, we committed to becoming the leading platform for energy trading," Soleja said in the release. "Today, our customers are managing complex power and renewable portfolios across multiple jurisdictions, all within Molecule.”

Molecule is also known for its data-as-a-lake platform, Bigbang, which enables energy ETRM and commodities trading and risk management (CTRM) customers to automatically import trade data from Molecule and then merge it with various sources to conduct queries and analysis.

“Molecule is doing something very few companies in energy tech have done: combining mission-critical depth with cloud-native, scalable technology,” Christian Stewart, Sundance Growth managing director, added in the statement.

“Sameer and his team have built a platform that’s not only powerful, but user-friendly—a rare combination in enterprise software. We’re thrilled to partner with Molecule as they continue to grow and transform the energy trading and risk management market.”

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Rice University professor earns $550k NSF award for wearable imaging tech​

science supported

Another Houston scientist has won one of the highly competitive National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Awards.

Lei Li, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University, has received a $550,000, five-year grant to develop wearable, hospital-grade medical imaging technology capable of visualizing deep tissue function in real-time, according to the NSF. The CAREER grants are given to "early career faculty members who demonstrate the potential to serve as academic models and leaders in research and education."

“This is about giving people access to powerful diagnostic tools that were once confined to hospitals,” Li said in a news release from Rice. “If we can make imaging affordable, wearable and continuous, we can catch disease earlier and treat it more effectively.”

Li’s research focuses on photoacoustic imaging, which merges light and sound to produce high-resolution images of structures deep inside the body. It relies on pulses of laser light that are absorbed by tissue, leading to a rapid temperature rise. During this process, the heat causes the tissue to expand by a fraction, generating ultrasound waves that travel back to the surface and are detected and converted into an image. The process is known to yield more detailed images without dyes or contrast agents used in some traditional ultrasounds.

However, current photoacoustic systems tend to use a variety of sensors, making them bulky, expensive and impractical. Li and his team are taking a different approach.

Instead of using hundreds of separate sensors, Li and his researchers are developing a method that allows a single sensor to capture the same information via a specially designed encoder. The encoder assigns a unique spatiotemporal signature to each incoming sound wave. A reconstruction algorithm then interprets and decodes the signals.

These advances have the potential to lower the size, cost and power consumption of imaging systems. The researchers believe the device could be used in telemedicine, remote diagnostics and real-time disease monitoring. Li’s lab will also collaborate with clinicians to explore how the miniaturized technology could help monitor cancer treatment and other conditions.

“Reducing the number of detection channels from hundreds to one could shrink these devices from bench-top systems into compact, energy-efficient wearables,” Li said in the release. “That opens the door to continuous health monitoring in daily life—not just in hospitals.”

Amanda Marciel, the William Marsh Rice Trustee Chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering and an assistant professor at Rice, received an NSF CAREER Award last year. Read more here.

Houston Spaceport launches $12M expansion for leading space tech co.

to the moon

Houston will get one step closer to the moon, as the Houston Spaceport at Ellington Airport (EFD) has announced an expansion of the lease for Intuitive Machines, the Houston space tech leader dedicated to furthering lunar exploration.

On July 15, the City of Houston announced passage of Amendment 1, which would add three acres of commercial space for Intuitive Machines at the spaceport and a $12 million infrastructure expansion. Approved by the city council and Mayor John Whitmire, the expansion will include new production, testing and support facilities. The amendment extends the current lease for Intuitive Machines from 20 years to 25 years.

"I want to shout out to Intuitive Machines about everything they’re doing at the Houston Spaceport. It’s exciting to see them expand. We’re starting to reach a critical mass out there — more and more aerospace companies want to be at the Spaceport because that’s where innovation is happening,” said Fred Flinkinger, who represents District E on the Houston City Council. “It’s a great sign of momentum, and we’re proud to have them here in Houston."

Intuitive Machines was the first commercial tenant for the Houston Spaceport when it moved into the facility in August 2016. Founded by Stephen Altemus, Kam Ghaffarian, and Tim Crain in 2013, the company holds three contracts with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to deliver payloads to the lunar surface. In 2023, the company opened its doors in Houston with a 105,572-square-foot Lunar Production and Operations Center that contains research and development labs, clean rooms, mission control centers, and a spacecraft assembly floor.


Intuitive Machines landed Odysseus on the moon in February 2024, the first privately owned soft lunar landing ever and the first soft landing since 1972.

The Houston Spaceport is owned and operated by the City of Houston and Houston Airports, who have an eye of keeping the city a prime name in space exploration. As "Houston" was the first word spoken on the moon when Apollo 11 landed in 1969, lunar exploration in particular has a soft place in the heart of the metropolis formerly known as Space City.

“This agreement reinforces Houston’s leadership in space innovation,” said Jim Szczesniak, director of aviation for Houston Airports. “We’re building infrastructure and supporting the next era of lunar and deep space exploration, right here at Houston Spaceport. This partnership represents the forward-thinking development that fuels job creation and drives long-term economic growth.”
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