Houston data solutions startup rebrands, expands to support neuroscience research

startup soars

This health tech company has made some significant changes in order to keep up with its growth. Photo via Getty Images

With a new CEO and chief operating officer aboard, Houston-based DataJoint is thinking small in order to go big.

Looking ahead to 2022, DataJoint aims to enable hundreds of smaller projects rather than a handful of mega-projects, CEO Dimitri Yatsenko says. DataJoint develops data management software that empowers collaboration in the neuroscience and artificial intelligence sectors.

"Our strategy is to take the lessons that we have learned over the past four years working with major projects with multi-institutional consortia," Yatsenko says, "and translate them into a platform that thousands of labs can use efficiently to accelerate their research and make it more open and rigorous."

Ahead of that shift, the startup has undergone some significant changes, including two moves in the C-suite.

Yatsenko became CEO in February after stints as vice president of R&D and as president. He co-founded the company as Vathes LLC in 2016. Yatsenko succeeded co-founder Edgar Walker, who had been CEO since May 2020 and was vice president of engineering before that.

In tandem with Yatsenko's ascent to CEO, the company brought aboard Jason Kirkpatrick as COO. Kirkpatrick previously was chief financial officer of Houston-based Darcy Partners, an energy industry advisory firm; chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Houston-based Solid Systems CAD Services (SSCS), an IT services company; and senior vice president of finance and general manager of operations at Houston-based SmartVault Corp., a cloud-based document management company.

"Most of our team are scientists and engineers. Recruiting an experienced business leader was a timely step for us, and Jason's vast leadership experience in the software industry and recurring revenue models added a new dimension to our team," Yatsenko says.

Other recent changes include:

Converting from an LLC structure to a C corporation structure to enable founders, employees, and future investors to be granted shares of the company's stock.
Shortening the business' name to DataJoint from DataJoint Neuro and recently launching its rebranded website.
Moving the company's office from the Texas Medical Center Innovation Institute (TMCx) to the Galleria area. The new space will make room for more employees. Yatsenko says the 12-employee startup plans to increase its headcount to 15 to 20 by the end of this year.

Over the past five years, the company's customer base has expanded to include neuroscience institutions such as Princeton University's Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute for Brain Science, as well as University College London and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. DataJoint's growth has been fueled in large part by grants from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

"The work we are tackling has our team truly excited about the future, particularly the capabilities being offered to the neuroscience community to understand how the brain forms perceptions and generates behavior," Yatsenko says.

A Houston-based software startup received a multimillion-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health for its work within neurophysiology. Getty Images

Data science startup based in Houston focus on neuroscience software nabs $3.78M grant

brain game

Armed with a nearly $3.8 million federal grant, a Houston startup aims to boost neuroscience research around the world.

Vathes LLC, a developer of data management software that collaborates with neuroscience research labs in North America and Europe, recently received the $3.78 million grant from the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). That initiative is part of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Vathes says the NIH funding will enable the startup to ramp up its DataJoint Pipelines for Neurophysiology project. The project aims to make open-source software for data science and engineering available to researchers who specialize in neurophysiology, a branch of neuroscience that looks at how the nervous system functions. The pipeline project holds the promise of benefiting research in areas like autism, Alzheimer's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease).

The project's principal investigator is Dimitri Yatsenko, vice president of research and development at Vathes. Technologically speaking, neuroscientists are playing catch-up with their counterparts in fields like astrophysics, genomics, and bioinformatics, according to Yatsenko.

Neuroscience "is undergoing a fast transformation in terms of moving toward much more data-centric, data-intensive, computation-intensive, and collaborative projects," Yatsenko says. This means that neuroscientists are "now finding themselves having to quickly adapt to an environment," he adds, "where they have to share big data and computations with their collaborators in very dynamic settings and perform them in a very fluid way."

Yatsenko says the NIH-funded project will help smaller research groups tap into the technical expertise of larger research labs.

Vathes' DataJoint Neuro platform and services, which help create so-called DataJoint pipelines, enable neuroscientists to streamline, analyze, and visualize complex data. Among its customers are Princeton University's Neuroscience Institute and Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute. The federally funded project will empower smaller labs to capitalize on existing DataJoint pipelines as ready-to-go turnkey packages, Yatsenko says.

In essence, Vathes' technology acts as a translator. Big research labs collect data in databases that can vary by computer language and platform. Through the Vathes setup, that data can be incorporated by a lab of any size into algorithmic, machine learning, and artificial intelligence mechanisms, regardless of the computer language or platform.

Edgar Walker, CEO of Vathes, says this simplifies the construction and use of databases, giving scientists "more room to focus on the logic of their data pipeline rather than on the physical implementation of it."

Founded in 2016, Vathes is housed at the Texas Medical Center's Innovation Institute. It employs 10 people. The startup previously received a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Yatsenko says the project backed by the $3.78 million NIH grant will propel the startup's growth, as it "gives us a big window of opportunity" to provide tools and services that support the startup's open-source software.

"As the NIH and other funding agencies are shifting a lot of their focus to collaborative projects that are distributed among multiple institutions," Walker says, "we've established a reputation as the company that can facilitate such research, be efficient, and actually be cost-effective as well, and make the projects very smooth."

"We expect to continue to grow this business at the same exponential rate," he adds. "We'll keep our fingers crossed and see how things go."

CEO Edgar Walker (left) and Dimitri Yatsenko, vice president of research and development, lead Houston-based Vathes. Photos courtesy of Vathes

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Micro-nuclear reactor to launch at Texas A&M innovation campus in 2026

nuclear pilot

The Texas A&M University System and Last Energy plan to launch a micro-nuclear reactor pilot project next summer at the Texas A&M-RELLIS technology and innovation campus in Bryan.

Washington, D.C.-based Last Energy will build a 5-megawatt reactor that’s a scaled-down version of its 20-megawatt reactor. The micro-reactor initially will aim to demonstrate safety and stability, and test the ability to generate electricity for the grid.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) fast-tracked the project under its New Reactor Pilot Program. The project will mark Last Energy’s first installation of a nuclear reactor in the U.S.

Private funds are paying for the project, which Robert Albritton, chairman of the Texas A&M system’s board of regents, said is “an example of what’s possible when we try to meet the needs of the state and tap into the latest technologies.”

Glenn Hegar, chancellor of the Texas A&M system, said the 5-megawatt reactor is the kind of project the system had in mind when it built the 2,400-acre Texas A&M-RELLIS campus.

The project is “bold, it’s forward-looking, and it brings together private innovation and public research to solve today’s energy challenges,” Hegar said.

As it gears up to build the reactor, Last Energy has secured a land lease at Texas A&M-RELLIS, obtained uranium fuel, and signed an agreement with DOE. Founder and CEO Bret Kugelmass said the project will usher in “the next atomic era.”

In February, John Sharp, chancellor of Texas A&M’s flagship campus, said the university had offered land at Texas A&M-RELLIS to four companies to build small modular nuclear reactors. Power generated by reactors at Texas A&M-RELLIS may someday be supplied to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid.

Also in February, Last Energy announced plans to develop 30 micro-nuclear reactors at a 200-acre site about halfway between Lubbock and Fort Worth.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Houston falls from top 50 in global ranking of 'World's Best Cities'

Rankings & Reports

Houston is no longer one of the top 50 best cities in the world, according to a prestigious annual report by Canada-based real estate and tourism marketing firm Resonance Consultancy.

The newest "World's Best Cities" list dropped Houston from No. 40 last year to No. 58 for 2026.

The experts at Resonance Consultancy annually compare the world's top 100 cities with metropolitan populations of at least 1 million residents or more based on the relative qualities of livability, "lovability," and prosperity. The firm additionally collaborated with AI software company AlphaGeo to determine each city's "exposure to risk, adaptation capacity," and resilience to change.

The No. 1 best city in the world is London, with New York (No. 2), Paris (No. 3), Tokyo (No. 4), and Madrid (No. 5) rounding out the top five in 2026.

Houston at least didn't rank as poorly as it did in 2023, when the city surprisingly plummeted as the 66th best city in the world. In 2022, Houston ranked 42nd on the list.

Despite dropping 18 places, Resonance Consultancy maintains that Houston "keeps defying gravity" and is a "coveted hometown for the best and brightest on earth."

The report cited the Houston metro's ever-growing population, its relatively low median home values ($265,000 in 2024), and its expanding job market as top reasons for why the city shouldn't be overlooked.

"Chevron’s shift of its headquarters from California to Houston, backed by $100 million in renovations, crowns relocations drawn by record 2024 Port Houston throughput of more than four million containers and a projected 71,000 new jobs in 2025," the report said.

The report also draws attention to the city's diversity, spanning from the upcoming grand opening of the long-awaited Ismaili Center, to the transformation of several industrial buildings near Memorial City Mall into a mixed-use development called Greenside.

"West Houston’s Greenside will convert 35,000 square feet of warehouses into a retail, restaurant and community hub around a one-acre park by 2026, while America’s inaugural Ismaili Center remains on schedule for later this year," the report said. "The gathering place for the community and home for programs promoting understanding of Islam and the Ismaili community is another cultural jewel for the country’s most proudly diverse major city."

In Resonance Consultancy's separate list ranking "America's Best Cities," Houston fell out of the top 10 and currently ranks as the 13th best U.S. city.

Elsewhere in Texas, Austin and Dallas also saw major declines in their standings for 2026. Austin plummeted from No. 53 last year to No. 87 for 2026, and Dallas fell from No. 53 to No. 78.

"In this decade of rapid transformation, the world’s cities are confronting challenges head‑on, from climate resilience and aging infrastructure to equitable growth," the report said. "The pandemic, long forgotten but still a sage oracle, exposed foundational weaknesses – from health‑care capacity to housing affordability. Yet, true to their dynamic nature, the leading cities are not merely recovering, but setting the pace, defining new paradigms of innovation, sustainability and everyday livability."

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Waymo self-driving robotaxis will launch in Houston in 2026

Coming Soon

Houston just cleared a major lane to the future. Waymo has announced the official launch of its self-driving robotaxi service in the Bayou City, beginning with employee-only operations this fall ahead of a public launch in early 2026.

The full rollout will include three Texas cities, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, along with Miami and Orlando, Florida. Currently, the company operates in the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, with service available in Austin and Atlanta through Uber.

Before letting its technology loose on a city, Waymo first tests the routes with human drivers. Once each locale is mapped, the cars can begin driving independently. Unique situations are flagged by specialists, and engineers evaluate performance in virtual replicas of each city.

“Waymo’s quickly entering a number of new cities in the U.S. and around the world, and our approach to every new city is consistent,” explained the announcement. “We compare our driving performance against a proven baseline to validate the performance of the Waymo Driver and identify any unique local characteristics.”

The launch puts Waymo ahead of Tesla. Elon Musk’s Austin-based carmaker has made a lot of hullabaloo about autonomy being the future of the company, but has yet to launch its service on a wide scale.

Waymo started testing San Antonio’s roadways in May as part of a multi-city “road trip,” which also included Houston. The company says its measured approach to launches helps alleviate local concern over safety and other issues.

“The future of transportation is accelerating, and we are driving it forward with a commitment to quality and safety,” Waymo wrote. “Our rigorous process of continuous iteration, validation, and local engagement ensures that we put communities first as we expand.”

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