Houston innovators: Mentoring women in STEM should be your new year's resolution

Houston voices

It's time to devote more attention and focus on closing the gender gap in STEM, according to this University of Houston expert. Graphic by Miguel Tovar/University of Houston

Researchers and scientists can give girls a ‘leg up’.

According to Allison Master, assistant professor of psychological, health and learning sciences at the University of Houston: “Stereotypes that STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] is for boys begin in grade school, and by the time they reach high school, many girls have made their decision not to pursue degrees in computer science and engineering because they feel they don’t belong.”

Stats for STEM

The statistics are not encouraging. According to the U.S. Census: “Women made gains – from 8 percent of STEM workers in 1970 to 27 percent in 2019 – but men still dominated the field. Men made up 52 percent of all U.S. workers but 73 percent of all STEM workers.”

“But there are huge disparities between STEM fields in the representation of women,” said Master, whose new paper looks at the emergence of gender gaps among children and adolescents. “Fields like computer science (25 percent of computer jobs are held by women) and engineering (15 percent of engineering jobs are held by women) have some of the lowest percentages of women among STEM fields. On the other hand, women are overrepresented in health fields (74 percent of health-related jobs are held by women).”

Her research specifically looked at computer science and engineering fields. “We wanted to gain a better understanding of why there is such wide variation among STEM fields, and what we can do earlier in the pipeline to encourage more young girls to enter these fields.”

Off to an unfortunate start

“We find that children start to believe that boys are more interested than girls in engineering by age six (first grade), and that children start to believe that boys are more interested than girls in computer science by age eight (third grade). The more that young girls believe those stereotypes, the less interested they are in those fields,” said Master. “If girls believe they won’t belong in fields like computer science and engineering because those are fields ‘for boys,’ then they may miss out on opportunities to try those kinds of activities.”

Master decided to conduct a study on stereotyping gender roles.

“In one study, we told eight and nine year-old children about two computer science activities. When we told them that ‘girls are much less interested than boys’ in one of the activities, we found that girls became much less interested and less willing to try that activity (compared to another activity for which we told them ‘girls and boys are equally interested.’) These stereotypes can shape that choices that young girls make, opening or closing doors to different career pathways,” said Master.

Narrowing the gender gap

How do we turn this around? Mentoring elementary-age students is one way we can increase the percentage of girls who are ushered into STEM fields.

Stem Like a Girl is an initiative that aims to encourage young women to enter the STEM fields. Their website states: “We believe girls need to see strong women in STEM fields to feel supported in pursuing their own science and engineering interests.” An IBM initiative in India has a similar aim. “There are lots of terrific organizations working to connect women in STEM as role models for younger girls (e.g., Society of Women Engineers, Black Girls Code, National Girls Collaborative Project, etc.),” Master adds.

Many higher education institutions hold STEM camps for girls exclusively. For instance, University of California-Davis has a program called STEM For Girls – which boasts a student demographic of 79 percent ethnic minorities. The University of Houston Hewlett Packard Enterprise Data Science Institute holds a summer camp each year called the Middle School Girls Coding Academy. This program is focused on middle school girls (rising 6th–8th graders) who learn Scratch, HTML, Game Design, and Python programming. The Academy runs another camp for high school-aged girls.

The big idea

It’s January – time for New Year’s resolutions. How about becoming a mentor or volunteering to give a presentation or teach a camp for young girls in STEM? Master goes on to say that even men in STEM should mentor young women.

“Role models are important because they help girls believe, ‘People like me can succeed,’ and ‘People like me belong here.’ But the most important thing that all role models can do (women and men, because men can also be very effective role models for girls in STEM) is to be relatable and make their work seem interesting and meaningful,” Master says.

So, does your institution have a program in robotics or coding just for girls? Or if you feel like you could benefit from a mentorship program yourself, you can apply at organizations like Harvard Women In Technology +. Harvard WIT+ helps to connect women early in their STEM careers with seasoned mentors.

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This article originally appeared on the University of Houston's The Big Idea. Sarah Hill, the author of this piece, is the communications manager for the UH Division of Research.

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Houston medtech startup clears FDA approval for new surgical tool

precision surgery

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.

"Receiving FDA clearance for the Prana System represents a defining milestone for our company," Joanna Nathan, CEO and co-founder of Prana Surgical, said in a news release. "Surgeons today are increasingly focused on achieving precise outcomes while minimizing disruption to healthy tissue. The Prana System was designed to support that shift by integrating targeting and excision into a single, streamlined tool."

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.

The Prana System is a minimally invasive, image-guided, single-use tissue extraction tool designed to retrieve samples without damaging healthy tissue. The tool is still designed with the respiratory system in mind, helping Prana in the fight against lung cancer and other thoracic diseases.

Reducing the impact of tissue extraction via electrosurgery and enhanced image scanning can significantly reduce complications. The Prana System combines localization and tissue-cutting capabilities in one, which keeps surgeons from having to swap out components during a procedure, making for a smoother process. It can core, cut and feel blood vessels on the way toward the intended target, giving surgeons greater control over tissue preservation.

"Electrosurgery is foundational to modern surgery, but there is still opportunity to improve how energy-based tools are applied in minimally invasive settings," Nathan added. "Our goal is to introduce a new class of image-guided surgical tools that enable more precise intervention across a range of procedures."

The company projects sales of $7.5 billion from the Prana System in the United States, estimating that 2.5 million surgical modules will be able to use the new tool. While starting out focused on biopsies, the company plans to evolve the system into other procedures, such as ablation, in the future. It is also planning for a controlled U.S. clinical rollout as it moves toward commercialization

Texas still ranks as No. 1 in U.S. for inbound moves, but growth dips

by the numbers

Texas continues to be the country’s No. 1 magnet for newcomers from other states, giving a boost to the state’s economy. However, Texas’ appeal weakened in 2024 compared with the previous year, due in large part to spiking home prices.

An analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by self-storage platform StorageCafe shows Texas saw net interstate migration of 76,000 people in 2024. Texas’ net interstate migration dropped nearly 50 percent from 2023, according to the analysis. Net migration refers to the number of incoming residents minus the number of outgoing residents.

California remained the top source of newcomers for Texas, sending nearly 77,000 residents to the Lone Star State in 2024, the analysis says. Florida ranked second, followed by New York, Colorado and Illinois.

“These trends reveal Texas’ continued pull from both high-cost coastal markets and other large Sun Belt states, resulting in a mix of affordability-driven and job-driven relocation,” StorageCafe says.

Putting a damper on the influx of new residents: a roughly 124 percent surge in Texas home prices over the past decade, according to StorageCafe.

“While the state remains significantly more affordable than California, its top feeder state, the once-wide pricing gap has narrowed,” says StorageCafe. “For many movers, Texas is still a relative bargain, but no longer an undisputed one.”

Nonetheless, Texas keeps attracting young, highly educated people, which bodes well for the state’s long-term economic outlook, StorageCafe says. More than half of new arrivals to Texas in 2024 held at least a bachelor’s degree, and the age of newcomers averaged 32.

Where are most of these young, highly educated newcomers settling?

Lloyd Potter, former Texas state demographer, tells StorageCafe that population growth in Texas is happening most rapidly in suburban “ring counties” at the expense of slowing growth in urban cores. Ring counties are on the outskirts of major metro areas.

“Many people are moving from urban cores to suburban rings seeking lower costs, newer housing, better schools, and more space,” Potter says. “Typically, a move to a suburban county will be within commuting or hybrid‑commuting distance of major metro economies.”

Artemis II makes historic call to space station with help from Houston Mission Control

History in the making

Still aglow from their triumphant lunar flyby, the Artemis II astronauts made more history Tuesday, April 7: calling their friends aboard the International Space Station hundreds of thousands of miles away as they headed home from the moon.

It was the first moonship-to-spaceship radio linkup ever. NASA's Apollo crews had no off-the-planet company back in the 1960s and 1970s, the last time humanity set sail for deep space.

"We have been waiting for this like you can’t imagine,” Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman called out.

For Christina Koch on Artemis II and Jessica Meir aboard the space station, it marked a joyous space reunion despite being 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) apart. The two teamed up for the world's first all-female spacewalk in 2019 outside the orbiting lab.

Koch told her “astro-sister” that she'd hoped to meet up with her again in space “but I never thought it would be like this — it's amazing.”

“I'm so happy that we are back in space together,” Meir replied, “even if we are a few miles apart.”

Houston's Mission Control arranged the cosmic chitchat between the four lunar travelers and the space station's three NASA and one French residents.

Koch described being awe-struck by not just the beauty of Earth, “but how much blackness there was around it.”

“It just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive,” she told the space station crew. “The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized” when viewing the home planet from the moon.

By late Tuesday afternoon, the Artemis II astronauts had beamed back more than 50 gigabytes' worth of pictures and other data from the previous day's lunar rendezvous, which set a new distance record for humanity. The highlight: an Earthset photo reminiscent of Apollo 8's Earthrise shot from 1968.

"While they are inspirational and, I think, allow all of us to really feel a little bit of what they were feeling, there's also a lot of science hidden inside of those images," said Mission Control's lead lunar scientist Kelsey Young. “The conversations and the science lessons learned are just beginning."

During a debriefing with Young, the astronauts recounted how they spotted a cascade of pinpricks of light on the lunar surface from impacting cosmic debris. The flashes lasted mere milliseconds and coincided by chance with Monday evening's total solar eclipse.

Young said it was too soon to know whether the crew witnessed an actual meteor shower or more random, run-of-the-mill micrometeoroid hits. Either way, there were “audible screams of delight” in the science operations center, she said.

Koch described being awe-struck by not just the beauty of Earth, “but how much blackness there was around it.”

“It just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive,” she told the space station crew. “The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized” when viewing the home planet from the moon.

The first lunar explorers since Apollo 17 in 1972, Wiseman and his crew are aiming for a splashdown off the San Diego coast on Friday to wrap up the nearly 10-day test flight. The recovery ship USS John P. Murtha left port Tuesday for the target zone.

It sets the stage for next year's Artemis III, a lunar lander docking demo in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV will follow in 2028 with two astronauts attempting to land near the lunar south pole.

As for the Orion capsule’s pesky potty, Mission Control assured the astronauts that no maintenance was required Tuesday. The toilet has been on-and-off limits to the crew ever since last week’s launch, prompting them to rely on a backup bag-and-funnel system for urinating.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told the crew following the lunar flyby Monday night: “We definitely have to fix some of the plumbing” ahead of the next Artemis mission. Engineers suspect a clogged filter in the overboard flushing system.

Aside from the toilet and other relatively minor matters, the mission has gone well, Isaacman noted at a news conference Tuesday, “but I'll breathe easier when we get through reentry and everybody's under chutes and in the water.”

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