Annual Rice student startup competition names winners, awards over $100,000 in prizes

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Here's what student-founded companies won big at this annual competition. Photo courtesy of Rice University

Five startups founded by Rice University students pitched their companies this week — and walked away with more than $100,000 in prizes.

The H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge, or NRLC, is an annual competition that selects a small group of student-founded startups from Rice University. The program, which is open to undergraduate, graduate, and MBA students, concluded on April 19 and doled out several investment prizes to the finalists, which were named earlier this month.

Here's what each finalist walked away with this year:

First Place: Goldie

Goldie, founded by three Rice MBA students, won the first place — a $50,000 investment prize — as well as the Frank Liu Jr. Prize for Creative Innovations in Music, Fashion, & the Arts, which came with $2,500.

The company uses its algorithm-based fit finder technology to help online shoppers find their perfect fits digitally based on physical measurements and production size charts. On the other end of the transactions, Goldie lowers the 21 percent e-commerce rate of returns and increases customer lifetime value.

Founders: Viviane Nguyen, CEO and MBA ‘23; Stephanie Zhou, COO and MBA ‘23; Samantha Wong, CTO and Master's of science in Mechanical Engineering and MBA ‘22.

Second Place: Tierra Climate

Coming in second place — and securing a $25,000 prize, was Tierra Climate. The company is looking at a unique challenge within the grid-scale battery business. Normally not compensated for the clean storage work they do, these battery operators are able to be compensated on the Tierra Climate platform, where battery projects can sell verified Carbon Avoidance Offsets to corporate buyers.

Founders: Emma Konet, CTO and MBA ’24; Jacob Mansfield, CEO and Harvard MBA ‘23

Third Place: Separion

Separion claimed third place and a $15,000 prize. The company is addressing battery storage with its solution that uses brines already produced by geothermal energy and provides an environmentally friendly extraction process will supply lithium faster, purer, and greener.

Founders: Yuren Feng, CEO and Environmental Engineering PhD ‘24; Xiaochuan Huang, CTO and Environmental Engineering PhD ‘23; Ze He, COO and Chemical Engineering PhD ‘23

Audience Choice Award: Sygne Solutions

Sygne Solutions secured the $1,500 Audience Choice Award. The company has created a patent-pending technology that permanently destroys PFAS – thereby eliminating them from the environment. The process is scalable and sustainable, and targets the substances in water.

Founders: Bo Wang, Chemical Engineering PhD ‘23; Subash Kannan, MBA ‘24; Dana Vazquez, MBA ‘24; Kimberly Heck, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Research Scientist

Outstanding Undergraduate Award: Tidepay

Tidepay won the Outstanding Undergraduate Award and $5,000. The company is targeting the shipping industry with its HR and payroll solution that streamlines the onboarding process and helps transfer wages to their globally positioned employees’ bank accounts. The technology enables character reading technology to scan documents and verify eligibility and provides digital bank accounts and debit cards to unbanked seafarers. They also serve the seafarer by offering financial and logistical support services beyond remittance.

Founders: Andrew Pitigoi, CEO and Finance BBA ‘26; Devin Shah, CFO and Finance BBA ‘26

Additional prizes:

The program also awarded two prizes to two organizations not previously listed as finalists by the program:

  • The Parent Teacher Collaborative, founded by Jessica Faith Carter MBA ‘24, a school and community based nonprofit that aims to improve student outcomes by building strong collaborative partnerships between parents and teachers, received the RISE@Rice: The Sen Social Pioneer Prize for $1,000.
  • RiseWorks, an AI-driven music therapy for mental health needs, secured the Frank Liu Jr. Prize for Creative Innovations in Music, Fashion, & the Arts for $2,500. The company was founded by Jucheng Shen BS ‘26, Lai Peng BS ‘24, Yuan Chen BS ‘25, and Kaiyuan Wu BS ‘23.
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UH-backed project secures $3.6M to transform CO2 into sustainable fuel with cutting-edge tech

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A University of Houston-associated project was selected to receive $3.6 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy that aims to transform sustainable fuel production.

Nonprofit research institute SRI is leading the project “Printed Microreactor for Renewable Energy Enabled Fuel Production” or PRIME-Fuel, which will try to develop a modular microreactor technology that converts carbon dioxide into methanol using renewable energy sources with UH contributing research.

“Renewables-to-liquids fuel production has the potential to boost the utility of renewable energy all while helping to lay the groundwork for the Biden-Harris Administration’s goals of creating a clean energy economy,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm says in an ARPA-E news release.

The project is part of ARPA-E’s $41 million Grid-free Renewable Energy Enabling New Ways to Economical Liquids and Long-term Storage program (or GREENWELLS, for short) that also includes 14 projects to develop technologies that use renewable energy sources to produce sustainable liquid fuels and chemicals, which can be transported and stored similarly to gasoline or oil, according to a news release.

Vemuri Balakotaiah and Praveen Bollini, faculty members of the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, are co-investigators on the project. Rahul Pandey, is a UH alum, and the senior scientist with SRI and principal investigator on the project.

Teams working on the project will develop systems that use electricity, carbon dioxide and water at renewable energy sites to produce renewable liquid renewable fuels that offer a clean alternative for sectors like transportation. Using cheaper electricity from sources like wind and solar can lower production costs, and create affordable and cleaner long-term energy storage solutions.

Researchers Rahul Pandey, senior scientist with SRI and principal investigator (left), and Praveen Bollini, a University of Houston chemical engineering faculty, are key contributors to the microreactor project. Photo via uh.edu

“As a proud UH graduate, I have always been aware of the strength of the chemical and biomolecular engineering program at UH and kept myself updated on its cutting-edge research,” Pandey says in a news release. “This project had very specific requirements, including expertise in modeling transients in microreactors and the development of high-performance catalysts. The department excelled in both areas. When I reached out to Dr. Bollini and Dr. Bala, they were eager to collaborate, and everything naturally progressed from there.”

The PRIME-Fuel project will use cutting-edge mathematical modeling and SRI’s proprietary Co-Extrusion printing technology to design and manufacture the microreactor with the ability to continue producing methanol even when the renewable energy supply dips as low as 5 percent capacity. Researchers will develop a microreactor prototype capable of producing 30 MJe/day of methanol while meeting energy efficiency and process yield targets over a three-year span. When scaled up to a 100 megawatts electricity capacity plant, it can be capable of producing 225 tons of methanol per day at a lower cost. The researchers predict five years as a “reasonable” timeline of when this can hit the market.

“What we are building here is a prototype or proof of concept for a platform technology, which has diverse applications in the entire energy and chemicals industry,” Pandey continues. “Right now, we are aiming to produce methanol, but this technology can actually be applied to a much broader set of energy carriers and chemicals.”

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This article originally ran on EnergyCapital.

Houston innovator drives collaboration, access to investment with female-focused group

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 262

After working in technology in her home country of Pakistan, Samina Farid, who was raised in the United States, found her way to Houston in the '70s where business was booming.

She was recruited to work at Houston Natural Gas — a company that would later merge and create Enron — where she rose through the ranks and oversaw systems development for the company before taking on a role running the pipelines.

"When you're in technology, you're always looking for inefficiencies, and you always see areas where you can improve," Farid says on the Houston Innovators Podcast, explaining that she moved on from Enron in the mid-'80s, which was an exciting time for the industry.

"We had these silos of data across the industry, and I felt like we needed to be communicating better, having a good source of data, and making sure we weren't continuing to have the problems we were having," she says. "That was really the seed that got me started in the idea of building a company."

She co-founded Merrick Systems, a software solutions business for managing oil and gas production, with her nephew, and thus began her own entrepreneurial journey. She came to another crossroads in her career after selling that business in 2014 and surviving her own battle with breast cancer.

"I got involved in investing because the guys used to talk about it — there was always men around me," Farid says. "I was curious."

In 2019, she joined an organization called Golden Seeds. Founded in 2005 in New York, the network of angel investors funding female-founded enterprises has grown to around 280 members across eight chapters. Suzan Deison, CEO of the Houston Women's Chamber, was integral in bringing the organization to Houston, and now Farid leads it as head of the Houston Chapter of Golden Seeds.

For Farid, the opportunity for Houston is the national network of investors — both to connect local female founders to potential capital from coast to coast and to give Houston investors deal flow from across the country.

"It was so hard for me to get funding for my own company," Farid says. "Having access to capital was only on the coasts. Software and startups was too risky."

Now, with Golden Seeds, the opportunity is there — and Farid says its an extremely collaborative investor network, working with local organizations like the Houston Angel Network and TiE Houston.

"With angel investing, when we put our money in, we want these companies to succeed," she says."We want more people to see these companies and to invest in them. We're not competing. We want to work with others to help these companies succeed."

Building a biotech workforce: How this Houston program is shaping the next generation

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Houston is currently in need of biomanufacturing professionals to keep up with the ever-growing industry. That's what Saniya Mansuri, health care consultant for BioPath @ TMC, says.

“Houston has lost out on a big biopharmaceutical company. And when there was a feasibility study that was done, it was identified that one of the reasons that Houston wasn't chosen was the lack of a workforce and a lack of workforce development programs,” she explains.

Mansuri and the TMC Innovation team are doing just that with the introduction of the new program. She moved from Toronto in 2023. When she applied for a role at TMC Innovation, she was handpicked to help shepherd the BioPath program, thanks to her background that included starting a nonprofit for underserved youth in Canada.

The goal of the BioPath program is to attract young people considering going into the trades to learn the skills to become biomanufacturing professionals. According to BioPath’s website, 42 percent of TMC institutions anticipate a great need for biotechnicians in the near future, but there’s a lack of places for workers to train that aren’t part of a four-year degree. BioPath not only helps to recruit youths to careers that only require two years of training, but educates them for success in their newly chosen jobs.

“For the role of biomanufacturing technician, you can do a certificate program, get certified and enter into an entry level career that pays upwards of $50,000 — a stable career where there is a lot of development and job mobility involved,” says Mansuri.

This school year saw the debut of a pilot program that began with marketing and awareness to begin to get kids excited. Working with the organization Bridge Year, BioPath has created a booth for career fairs at which there’s a simulation of the skills involved in column chromatography that potential technicians would be learning. The booth is currently touring HISD high schools.

BioPath is also partnering with the national nonprofit, Learning Undefeated, to create a mobile STEM lab that will park at schools starting in January.

“Instead of students going to a biology class, you would swap it out for a class on this mobile STEM lab, and we have a biomanufacturing activity and curriculum that the students would learn,” explains Mansuri.

But that’s only the beginning. BioPath is looking at securing internships for the students, as well as sponsoring interested students in attending a biomanufacturing summer camp run by Texas A&M. Once educated, Mansuri and her team will help their charges with certification, mentorship and finding jobs post-certification.

Mansuri says she’s already received emails from interested students who have taken part in the “Career Test Drive” booth, but expects more after a soft launch in February in which 200 high school students will come to the TMC to learn more. The future for biomanufacturing in Houston is looking more promising already.

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