Baylor College of Medicine names Minnesota med school dean as new president, CEO ​

new leader

Baylor College of Medicine has named Dr. Jakub Tolar as its new president, CEO and executive dean. Photo courtesy of Mendel Lectures.

Dr. Jakub Tolar, dean of the University of Minnesota Medical School, is taking over as president, CEO and executive dean of Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine on July 1.

Tolar—who’s also vice president for clinical affairs at the University of Minnesota and a university professor—will succeed Dr. Paul Klotman as head of BCM. Klotman is retiring June 30 after leading Texas’ top-ranked medical school since 2010.

In tandem with medical facilities such as Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center and Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor trains nearly half of the doctors who work at Texas Medical Center. In addition, Baylor is home to the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Texas Heart Institute.

The hunt for a new leader at Baylor yielded 179 candidates. The medical school’s search firm interviewed 44 candidates, and the pool was narrowed to 10 contenders who were interviewed by the Board of Trustees’ search committee. The full board then interviewed the four finalists, including Tolar.

Greg Brenneman, chair of Baylor’s board and the search committee, says Tolar is “highly accomplished” in the core elements of the medical school’s mission: research, patient care, education and community service.

“Baylor is phenomenal. Baylor is a superpower in academic medicine,” Tolar, a native of the Czech Republic, says in a YouTube video filmed at the medical school. “And everything comes together here because science saves lives. That is the superpower.”

Tolar’s medical specialties include pediatric blood and bone marrow transplants. His research, which he’ll continue at Baylor, focuses on developing cellular therapies for rare genetic disorders. In the research arena, he’s known for his care of patients with recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa, a severe genetic skin disorder.

In a news release, Tolar praises Baylor’s “achievements and foundation,” as well as the school’s potential to advance medicine and health care in “new and impactful ways.”

The Baylor College of Medicine employs more than 9,300 full-time faculty and staff. For the 2025-26 academic year, nearly 1,800 students are enrolled in the School of Medicine, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and School of Health Professions. Its M.D. program operates campuses in Houston and Temple.

In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2024, Baylor recorded $2.72 billion in operating revenue and $2.76 billion in operating expenses.

The college was founded in 1900 in Dallas and relocated to Houston in 1943. It was affiliated with Baylor University in Waco from 1903 to 1969.

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Houston Methodist awarded $4M grant to recruit head of Neal Cancer Center

new hire

Armed with a $4 million state grant, the Houston Methodist Academic Institute has recruited a renowned expert in ovarian and endometrial cancer research to lead the Dr. Mary and Ron Neal Cancer Center.

The grant, provided by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, enabled the institute to lure Dr. Daniela Matei away from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. There, she is the Diana Princess of Wales Professor in Cancer Research and chief of the Division of Reproductive Science in Medicine.

Matei will succeed Dr. Jenny Chang, who was hired last year to run the Houston Methodist Academic Institute.

At the Neal Cancer Center, located in the Texas Medical Center complex, oncologists work on innovations in cancer research, treatment, and technology. The center opened in 2021 after the Neals donated $25 million to expand Houston Methodist’s cancer research capabilities. It handles about 7,000 new cases each year involving more than two dozen types of cancer.

U.S. News & World Report puts Houston Methodist Hospital at No. 19 among the country’s best hospitals for cancer care, two spots below Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston sits at No. 1 on the list.

Matei’s research related to ovarian and endometrial cancer holds the potential to benefit tens of thousands of American women. The American Cancer Society estimates:

  • 21,010 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and 12,450 women will die from it.
  • 68,270 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with endometrial cancer, and 14,450 women will die from it.

Matei is leaving Northwestern in the wake of widespread cuts in federal funding for medical research. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has canceled or frozen tens of millions of dollars in grants for Northwestern, the Wall Street Journal reports, and the university has been plugging the gaps with its own money.

“The university is totally keeping us on life support,” Matei told the newspaper last year. “The big question is for how long they can do this.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, Matei’s $5 million NIH grant supporting 69 cancer trials has been caught up in the federal funding chaos, so Northwestern stepped in to cover trial expenses such as nurses’ salaries and diagnostic procedures.

Trial participants include some patients with rare, incurable tumors who are undergoing experimental treatments aligned with the genetics of their condition, the newspaper says.

“It’s certainly a life-and-death situation for cancer patients on these trials,” Matei said in 2025.

Matei is among the beneficiaries of more than $15 million in grants approved February 18 by CPRIT’s board. The grants went toward recruiting five cancer researchers to institutions in Texas.

One of those grants, totaling $1.5 million, went to the University of Houston to recruit Akash Gupta, a research scientist at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. The remaining grants went to recruit scientists to The University of Texas at Dallas and The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Rice University lands $14M state grant to open Center for Space Technologies

on a mission

Rice University’s Space Institute soon will be home to the newly created Center for Space Technologies.

On Feb. 17, the Texas Space Commission approved a nearly $14.2 million grant for the Rice project. The Center for Space Technologies will target:

  • Research and development
  • Technology transfer and innovation
  • Statewide partnerships
  • Workforce development training
  • Space-focused education programs

The goal of the new center “is to fulfill an articulated need for research, workforce development, and industry collaboration,” said Kemah communications and marketing executive Gwen Griffin, chair of the commission.

State Rep. Greg Bonnen, a Friendswood Republican, authored the bill that set up the Texas Space Commission.

Since being authorized in 2023, the commission has funded 24 projects, with Rice and Houston-area companies accounting for nearly $75 million in grants to back space-related initiatives.

The grant to Rice brings the TSC's total investment to $150 million, fully committing the entire state appropriation from the Texas Legislature in 2023.

Other local companies that have received grants over the years include Aegis Aerospace, Axiom Space, Intuitive Machines, Starlab Space and Venus Aerospace.

The commission also awarded $7 million to Blue Origin earlier this month. See a list of the 24 awards here.

Waymo self-driving robotaxis have officially launched in Houston

Waymo has arrived

Waymo will begin dispatching its robotaxis in four more cities in Texas and Florida, expanding the territory covered by its fleet of self-driving cars to 10 major U.S. metropolitan markets.

The move into Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando, Florida, announced Tuesday, February 24, widens Waymo's early lead in autonomous driving while rival services from Tesla and the Amazon-owned Zoox are still testing their vehicles in only a few U.S. cities.

In contrast, Waymo's robotaxis already provide more than 400,000 weekly trips in the six metropolitan areas where they have been transporting passengers: Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, and Austin, Texas.

Waymo operates its ride-hailing service through its own app in all the U.S. cities except Atlanta and Austin, where its robotaxis can only be summoned through Uber's ride-hailing service.

The expansion into four more markets marks a significant step toward Waymo's goal to surpass 1 million weekly paid trips by the end of 2026. Without identifying where its robotaxis will be available next, Waymo is targeting a list of eight other cities that include Las Vegas, Washington, Detroit and Boston while signaling its first overseas availability is likely to be London.

To help pay for more robotaxis, Waymo recently raised $16 billion as part of the financial infusion that puts the value of the company at $126 billion. The valuation fueled speculation that Waymo may eventually be spun off from its corporate parent Alphabet, where it began as a secret project within Google in 2009.

Although Waymo is opening up in four more cities, its robotaxis initially will only be made available to a limited number of people with its ride-hailing app in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando before the service will be available to all comers in those markets.

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