3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Jason Bock of CTMC, Barbara Burger, and Mario Amaro of Ease. Photos courtesy

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to three local innovators across industries — from cell therapy to energy transition — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Jason Bock, founder and CEO of CTMC

Jason Bock, founder and CEO of the Cell Therapy Manufacturing Center, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to explain the complicated — yet necessary — process of scaling cell therapies. Photo courtesy

Last year, a project out of MD Anderson spun out to create a new joint venture, CTMC — Cell Therapy Manufacturing Center, with National Resilience, a company that was founded to help advance life-saving therapeutics. The JV is based in the Texas Medical Center and led by CEO Jason Bock, who says the entity's location is critical.

"Houston has a chance to play a role in all aspects of cell therapy," he says, from discovery to the clinical side. "Some really interesting cell therapies that are in development were discovered here in Houston."

Bock shares more on how the impact CTMC is making on cell therapy advancement on the podcast. Read more.

Barbara J. Burger, startup adviser and mentor

Energy innovation expert, Barbara Burger, shares how she sees the future of energy playing out as a dance between mice — the startups — and elephants — the incumbent corporations. Photo courtesy

The way Barbara Burger sees it, the energy transition depends on a dance between startups, or the mice, and corporates, aka the elephants. In a guest column for InnovationMap, she explains what questions each side needs to address.

"There are lots of questions here and the why is often an iterative journey for both sides," she explains. "It is as much mindset, influence, strategy, champions, and risk tolerance at individual levels as it about technology and economics." Read more.

Mario Amaro, CEO and founder of Ease

Mario Amaro, founder of Ease, was selected for one of Amazon's accelerator programs. Photo courtesy of Amazon

Amazon's AWS Impact Accelerator Latino Founders Cohort named the 20 startups joining its accelerator that will connect Latinx founders to its network of mentors, provide programming, and even dole out funding.

A Houston company has joined a new Amazon program focused on Latin American founders. Photo courtesy of Amazon

Houston startup named to Amazon's Latinx-focused cohort

ready to grow

Amazon named the 20 startups joining its accelerator that will connect Latinx founders to its network of mentors, provide programming, and even dole out funding.

The AWS Impact Accelerator Latino Founders Cohort is a part of Amazon's $30 million commitment to supporting underrepresented startup founders. The eight-week program started this week in Amazon's Seattle headquarters.

“This cohort of the AWS Impact Accelerator aims to highlight the viability and ingenuity of Latino-led startups, so the VC community can increase support to these founders,” says Howard Wright, vice president and global head of startups at AWS, in the news release. “We’re looking forward to playing an active role in helping these companies turbocharge their growth through access to capital, experts, and all of the innovations that the AWS tech stack has to offer.”

Houston-based Ease, founded by Mario Amaro in 2018, the health care fintech platform allows for medical professionals to start, grow, and manage their private practices with bookkeeping tools and other software infrastructure. So far, the company has worked with more than 300 practices. Per Cruncbase data, the company has raised $2.8 million in pre-seed and grant funding. According to Amazon, the company's investors include Slauson & Co. and Precursor Ventures.

Mario Amaro, founder of Ease, was selected for one of Amazon's accelerator programs. Photo courtesy of Amazon

Last year, Ease was named among the 50 companies in the inaugural cohort of the Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund. In that program, each company received an equity-free $100,000 investment, as well as programming and support from Google, mentorship from technical and business experts, access to free mental health therapy, and more.

Ease stood out among the nearly 1,100 submissions to the program, according to the release, and joins 19 other companies from across the country and even Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico. Each of the cohort companies will receive up to $225,000 in cash and AWS Activate credits, alongside a training curriculum, networking opportunities with Amazon staff and potential investors, and ongoing advisory support.

The other startups in the program include:

Alvva, a, immigrant-focused fintech platform from California
Cogniflow, a personal AI platform founded in Colombia with a New York US HQ
Deskfy, a marketing portal from Brazil with its US HQ in Delaware
DivySci Software, an edtech organization founded in New York
EducUp, an edtech company from Florida
Fielder, a Mexico-founded enterprise software-as-a-service with US-based operations in Delaware
GamerSafer, a security tech company within gaming from California
Kigüi, a Mexican money-saving grocery app
Kuentro, a Venezuelan affordable hiring platform that caters to middle- and working-class job seekers
Lazo Fintech Inc, a Florida-based fintech and legal platform
Leantime, a developer tool from North Carolina
Monadd, a Florida-founded personal finance platform
PilotoMail, a remote work platform founded in Puerto Rico
Sign-Speak, a New York startup with an American Sign Language device
STIGMA, a mental health mobile app from Illinois
Outtrip, a Argentina-founded tourism platform with US operations in Delaware
Panda Salud, a Mexico-based platform connecting health care small businesses with diagnostic test providers
Tienditapp, a Mexico-based app with a last-mile delivery model
TuCuota, a payment collections tool from Argentina

Google has named its first class of Latino entrepreneurs for its inclusive fund. Photo via Getty Images

Google taps 3 Houston Latino-led startups for inaugural non-equity cash awards

Money moves

Google announced today that it has selected 50 companies for the inaugural cohort of the Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund.

Nine startups in Texas have been selected — and three of them are bases in Houston. Each company will receive an equity-free $100,000 investment, as well as programming and support from Google, mentorship from technical and business experts, access to free mental health therapy, and more.

The Houston companies selected were:

AnswerBite, which supports marketing enterprise teams with social proof videos and customer insights in minutes and has over 300 clients
Boxes, which creates devices that combine physical and digital technology to democratize convenient, affordable, and sustainable retail
Ease, financial practice operations platform that helps clinicians build new practices from the ground up

“Being selected to attend the inaugural cohort of Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund gets us one step closer towards completing our mission of increasing healthcare access for Black and Latino communities,” says Dr. Mario Amaro, founder and CEO of Ease, in a news release. “The support and excitement that Google continues to have for small business gives us so much confidence in the future of private practice and clinician entrepreneurship.”

The program was founded to shrink the gap in opportunities and wealth for Latinos in the business community who are disproportionately affected by a lack of access to funding.

“We are excited to support these talented Latino entrepreneurs as they build innovative solutions and solve tough problems,” says Daniel Navarro, US marketing lead for Google for Startups, in the release. “I hope the launch of our inaugural Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund not only catalyzes the growth of these incredible Latino-led startups, but also inspires other Latino entrepreneurs, and ultimately generates wealth within the community."

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How Houston innovators played a role in the historic Artemis II splashdown

safe landing

Research from Rice University played a critical role in the safe return of U.S. astronauts aboard NASA’s Artemis II mission this month.

Rice mechanical engineer Tayfun E. Tezduyar and longtime collaborator Kenji Takizawa developed a key computational parachute fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis system that proved vital in NASA’s Orion capsule’s descent into the Pacific Ocean. The FSI system, originally developed in 2013 alongside NASA Johnson Space Center, was critical in Orion’s three-parachute design, which slowed the capsule as it returned to Earth, according to Rice.

The model helped ensure that the parachute design was large enough to slow the capsule for a safe landing while also being stable enough to prevent the capsule from oscillating as it descended.

“You cannot separate the aerodynamics from the structural dynamics,” Tezduyar said in a news release. “They influence each other continuously and even more so for large spacecraft parachutes, so the analysis must capture that interaction in a robustly coupled way.”

The end result was a final parachute system, refined through NASA drop tests and Rice’s computational FSI analysis, that eliminated fluctuations and produced a stable descent profile.

Apart from the dynamic challenges in design, modeling Orion’s parachutes also required solving complex equations that considered airflow and fabric deformation and accounted for features like ringsail canopy construction and aerodynamic interactions among multiple parachutes in a cluster.

“Essentially, my entire group was dedicated to that work, because I considered it a national priority,” Tezduyar added in the release. “Kenji and I were personally involved in every computer simulation. Some of the best graduate students and research associates I met in my career worked on the project, creating unique, first-of-its-kind parachute computer simulations, one after the other.”

Current Intuitive Machines engineer Mario Romero also worked on Orion during his time at NASA. From 2018 to 2021, Romero was a member of the Orion Crew Capsule Recovery Team, which focused on creating likely scenarios that crewmembers could encounter in Orion.

The team trained in NASA’s 6.2-million-gallon pool, using wave machines to replicate a range of sea conditions. They also simulated worst-case scenarios by cutting the lights, blasting high-powered fans and tipping a mock capsule to mimic distress situations. In some drills, mock crew members were treated as “injured,” requiring the team to practice safe, controlled egress procedures.

“It’s hard to find the appropriate descriptors that can fully encapsulate the feeling of getting to witness all the work we, and everyone else, did being put into action,” Romero tells InnovationMap. “I loved seeing the reactions of everyone, but especially of the Houston communities—that brought me a real sense of gratitude and joy.”

Intuitive Machines was also selected to support the Artemis II mission using its Space Data Network and ground station infrastructure. The company monitored radio signals sent from the Orion spacecraft and used Doppler measurements to help determine the spacecraft's precise position and speed.

Tim Crain, Chief Technology Officer at Intuitive Machines, wrote about the experience last week.

"I specialized in orbital mechanics and deep space navigation in graduate school,” Crain shared. “But seeing the theory behind tracking spacecraft come to life as they thread through planetary gravity fields on ultra-precise trajectories still seems like magic."

Rice Alliance names first head of platform & more innovation headlines

Trending News

Editor's note: The top April innovation headlines to know include Rice Alliance's newly minted head of platform and FDA approval for a local medtech startup. Below are the five most-read InnovationMap stories from April 1-15, 2026:

1. Rice Alliance names Houston healthtech exec as first head of platform

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship has named its first head of platform. Houston entrepreneur Laura Neder stepped into the newly created role last month, according to an email from Rice Alliance. Neder will focus on building and growing Houston’s Venture Advantage Platform. The emerging platform, which is being promoted by Rice Alliance and the Ion, aims to connect founders with the "people, capital and expertise they need to scale." Continue reading.

2. Houston medtech startup clears FDA approval for new surgical tool

Prana Surgical has developed a minimally invasive, image-guided, single-use tissue extraction tool. Photo via LinkedIn

Houston-based Prana Surgical will soon bring a new electrosurgical tool to operating rooms around the country. The Prana System officially cleared U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval earlier this month. Prana Surgical began as Prana Thoracic in 2022. Back then, the company primarily focused on developing screening tools for lung cancer diagnosis. It raised $6 million in series A funding rounds in 2023 and 2024 before transitioning to broader surgical needs in 2025. Continue reading.

3. Houston leads U.S. in population growth for 2025, Census says

The 10-county Houston metro added 126,720 residents from July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025. Photo via Getty Images

Imagine that the Houston metro area swallowed a city the size of Pearland in just one year. That’s essentially what happened from 2024 to 2025, with the Houston metro ranking first in the U.S. for population growth based on the number of people. New estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show the 10-county Houston metro added 126,720 residents from July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025. That’s just shy of Pearland’s roughly 133,000-resident tally. Continue reading.

4. 8+ can't-miss Houston business and innovation events in April

From the Rice Business Plan Competition to the Veterans Business Battle, here's what not to miss in April and how to register. Photo courtesy the Ion

Houston's weeklong innovation festival kicked off April, followed by Rice University's globally recognized pitch competition returning for its 26th year. Plus, find coworking pop-ups, industry meetups, pitch battles and even a crawfish boil on the calendar. Continue reading.

5. Houston unicorn closes $421M to fuel first phase of flagship energy project

Tim Latimer, CEO and co-founder of Fervo Energy. Photo courtesy of Fervo Energy

Houston geothermal unicorn Fervo Energy has closed $421 million in non-recourse debt financing for the first phase of its flagship Cape Station project in Beaver County, Utah. Fervo believes Cape Station can meet the needs of surging power demand from data centers, domestic manufacturing and an energy market aiming to use clean and reliable power. According to the company, Cape Station will begin delivering its first power to the grid this year and is expected to reach approximately 100 megwatts of operating capacity by early 2027. Fervo added that it plans to scale to 500 megawatts. Continue reading.

UH breakthrough moves superconductivity closer to real-world use

Energy Breakthrough

University of Houston researchers have set a new benchmark in the field of superconductivity.

Researchers from the UH physics department and the Texas Center for Superconductivity (TcSUH) have broken the transition temperature record for superconductivity at ambient pressure. The accomplishment could lead to more efficient ways to generate, transmit and store energy, which researchers believe could improve power grids, medical technologies and energy systems by enabling electricity to flow without resistance, according to a release from UH.

To break the record, UH researchers achieved a transition temperature 151 Kelvin, which is the highest ever recorded at ambient pressure since the discovery of superconductivity in 1911.

The transition temperature represents the point just before a material becomes superconducting, where electricity can flow through it without resistance. Scientists have been working for decades to push transition temperature closer to room temperature, which would make superconducting technologies more practical and affordable.

Currently, most superconductors must be cooled to extremely low temperatures, making them more expensive and difficult to operate.

UH physicists Ching-Wu Chu and Liangzi Deng published the research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this month. It was funded by Intellectual Ventures and the state of Texas via TcSUH and other foundations. Chu, founding director and chief scientist at TcSUH, previously made the breakthrough discovery that the material YBCO reaches superconductivity at minus 93 K in 1987. This helped begin a global competition to develop high-temperature superconductors.

“Transmitting electricity in the grid loses about 8% of the electricity,” Chu, who’s also a professor of physics at UH and the paper’s senior author, said in a news release. “If we conserve that energy, that’s billions of dollars of savings and it also saves us lots of effort and reduces environmental impacts.”

Chu and his team used a technique known as pressure quenching, which has been adapted from techniques used to create diamonds. With pressure quenching, researchers first apply intense pressure to the material to enhance its superconducting properties and raise its transition temperature.

Next, researchers are targeting ambient-pressure, room-temperature superconductivity of around 300 K. In a companion PNAS paper, Chu and Deng point to pressure quenching as a promising approach to help bridge the gap between current results and that goal.

“Room-temperature superconductivity has been seen as a ‘holy grail’ by scientists for over a century,” Rohit Prasankumar, director of superconductivity research at Intellectual Ventures, said in the release. “The UH team’s result shows that this goal is closer than ever before. However, the distance between the new record set in this study and room temperature is still about 140 C. Closing this gap will require concerted, intentional efforts by the broader scientific community, including materials scientists, chemists, and engineers, as well as physicists.”

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

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