New convenient ridesharing service for kids rolls out in Houston

ridesharing for kids

The new service rolling out in Houston is part Uber for kids, part carpool. Photo courtesy of HopSkipDrive

Living in Houston is great, but it does present some challenges — especially for busy families. Imagine this scenario: it's Tuesday morning, Mom has an early office meeting, Dad has to fly out of IAH on business, and three kids have to be transported to two different schools ... and it all has to happen before 8 am.

That scene probably plays closer to reality for many Bayou City parents. Add into it the regular crush of our city's congestion and it's enough for anyone to lose their mind.

Enter HopSkipDrive. Part Uber, part carpool the service just launched in Houston, billing itself as a safe an innovative transportation solution for both families and schools. It's already working with more than 170 schools and districts nationwide in cities in Arizona, California, Colorado, and Virginia, as well as Washington, D.C.

The company provides transit solutions for students of all levels and abilities who may have different schedules from day-to-day, as well as youth in foster care and families whose school choice placements don't fit neatly into a bus routing plan.

The system works similarly to other ride shares. Parents download the HopSkipDrive app or use the company's website to request rides for children who are at least six years old. Parents can customize ride instructions with notes about carpool line, pickup and drop-off procedures, and other details. Before the ride, parents receive a photo profile of their CareDriver, which they can share with their child and their school. During the ride, parents receive progress alerts at each step.

If all that has alarm bells going off in parents' and educators' heads, HopSkipDrive understands, and the company assures them it has a rigorous screening procedure for its drivers. Every CareDriver has at least five years of care-giving experience and has passed a 15-point certification process.

This certification is a stringent vetting process, including fingerprinting, background checks using FBI and Department of Justice database searches, driving record checks, and in-person meetings. Drivers must own or lease a four-door vehicle that is not more than 10 years old that can seat between four and seven passengers, and must pass a yearly 19-point inspection.

In addition, parents can get live text notifications during their child's ride, HopSkipDrive's Safe Ride Support (SRS) is the only U.S.-based team in the industry that monitors every ride in real time. Staffed with former 911 operators, EMTs, childcare specialists, and parents, SRS ensures every rider is delivered safely to their destination.

"As a working mother of two, I understand how challenging it is to balance your children's ever-changing daily schedules with workplace demands," says Joanna McFarland, the company's founder and CEO in a press release that announced the company's Houston launch. "Parents shouldn't have to choose between their careers and their children's education and activities, but that tough choice is very real for countless families. HopSkipDrive wants parents to take comfort in knowing they have a caregiver to rely on to get their kids where they need to go, safely and without worry. We're thrilled to arrive in the Greater Houston Area to answer the transportation needs of many students, families and schools."

And individual schools or school districts can also partner with the ride share service for their student transportation needs.

"HopSkipDrive is not only 60 percent less expensive than our previous car service solution, but far more reliable," says Mike Hush, director of transportation with Littleton Public Schools in Colorado. "We had worked with HopSkipDrive for only a few weeks before we quadrupled the number of students riding with CareDrivers."

The company touts itself as both an asset and a success in cities around the country. With its working-mom founding team, heightened approach to safety, and real-time technology approach, HopSkipDrive could provide a valuable service for Houston's busy working families.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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Rice, Houston Methodist award $90K for cancer research projects

seed grants

Rice University’s Synthesis X Center, in partnership with the Houston Methodist Neal Cancer Center, announced earlier this month the organizations would award $90,000 in seed grant funding to two projects that could help fight cancer. One would ease the pain of chemotherapy, while the other could change the way the progression of leukemia is tracked.

“We’re excited to be collaborating with the Neal Cancer Center to support collaborative, novel and interdisciplinary proposals to improve cancer care and outcomes,” Han Xiao, Rice professor of chemistry and the director of the SynthX Center, said in a news release. “Together, we can achieve translational excellence.”

The projects

Chemotherapy is one of the most effective cancer treatments, but it can be hard on the body. The human body doesn’t like being injected with radioactive material, especially the skin around the injection point, which can become extremely irritated. For patients in long-term treatment, the skin irritation can be more than just a bother; it can lead to infections that are dangerous to a compromised immune system.

Angel A Marti, a professor of chemistry at Rice University, and Biana Godin, an associate professor of nanoscience at Houston Methodist Research Institute, are experimenting with metal nanoclusters as a way to block radiation at the injection site. The nanocluster could be applied in a cream or a gel on the skin, serving as a type of shield against the harsh radioactive material.

Meanwhile, Yuan Ma, an assistant professor of chemistry at Rice, and Shu-Hsia Chen, a professor of immunology at Houston Methodist Research Institute, are working with m6A. Discovered in the 1970s, m6A is the most prevalent chemical modifier found in mRNA in mammals. It is prevalent in many cancers, including leukemia.

Ma and Chen are working on measuring the amount of m6A in leukemia to see if it can determine the most effective cancer treatments. The team is also experimenting with ways to shut off m6A to see if it makes current leukemia treatments more effective.

Progress from SynthX

SynthX was first launched in April 2024 to turn research from Rice and Houston Methodist into real-world cancer treatments. Within a year, the center had secured $1.5 million in grant money to work on crossing the blood-brain barrier in brain cancer treatments. These latest awards show that SynthX Center continues to bridge the worlds of research and clinical practice.

“This collaboration reflects a shared commitment to team science in cancer research,” Daniela Matei, the director of the Houston Methodist Neal Cancer Center, added in the release. “These are the types of translational and pioneering projects that lead to transformation in patient care.”'

The SynthX Center awarded $90,000 in seed grants to three teams in 2025 and $80,000 to three teams in 2024.

Tesla self-driving mode wasn't to blame in Houston-area crash, report suggests

Tesla news

Federal safety investigators looking into a runaway Tesla that killed a grandmother in her home say the driver had pressed the accelerator to full speed, suggesting the vehicle's self-driving software was not to blame.

The driver had told police that he had the self-driving software turned on, but a report from the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that he had actually overridden that feature when he pushed hard on the pedal. Moments later the Tesla Model 3 raced down a residential street in Katy, Texas, at highway speeds, slammed into a brick home and killed a 76-year-old woman standing in the front room.

The crash last month drew national attention because Tesla CEO Elon Musk is seeking to reassure the public its self-driving feature is safe as he prepares to turn hundreds of thousands of Teslas already on the road into fully automatic vehicles and begin selling two-seated Cybercabs missing steering wheels and pedals.

The crash came two months after officials at a separate federal agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, announced it was elevating a 2024 investigation of the self-driving feature to new “engineering analysis” level, raising the possibility of a recall of 3.2 million Tesla vehicles.

That NHTSA probe was triggered by crashes where the self-driving feature failed to alert drivers to take control in fog and other poor visibility conditions.

The agency opened an investigation last year into 58 incidents in which Teslas reportedly violated traffic safety laws while using self-driving technology, leading to more than a dozen crashes and fires and nearly two dozen injuries.

Separate from the National Transportation Safety Board, NHTSA is also looking into the Tesla house crash in Texas, one of 46 “special crash” investigations of Tesla's self-driving or driver-assistance technology in the past decade, according to the agency’s records. In more than a dozen of those crashes, at least one person — a driver, passenger or pedestrian — was killed.

Tesla had originally called its driver assistance software Full Self-Driving, or FSD, but auto experts and regulators complained it was misleading because drivers must always keep their eyes on the road and be ready to take over at any time.

The company has since changed the name to Full Self-Driving (Supervised).

Video of the Katy, Texas, accident shows the Tesla traveling at more than 70 mph (112.65 kilometers per hour), jumping a curb then tearing across a lawn before crushing through a brick wall of a home. A woman standing feet away, Martha Avila, was found amid piles of crumbling plaster, split beams and bits of furniture and rushed to a hospital but died.

Sales of Tesla cars still haven't recovered fully from boycotts last year over Musk's political stands, but the stock is rising anyway as he has successfully shifted attention away from the sales figures. He says they matter less now that the company is on the cusp of major technological advances, such as turning Teslas into hands-free vehicles and having its Optimus robots take over for humans for tasks at home and work.

Tesla stock has risen 22% in the past year and is currently trading at 170 times expected annual earnings compared to 20 for the S&P 500.

For its second-quarter financial results, financial analysts surveyed by FactSet expect earnings per share will barely budge — 32 cents versus 33 cents a year earlier — continuing a sixth quarter streak of flat or falling profits.

London AI startup selects Houston for first U.S. office after $20M raise

welcome to houston

London-based AI firm Applied Computing has announced a $20 million Series A round and a new office in Houston.

The new Bayou City office is Applied Computing’s first in the United States and part of its North American expansion. The company is known for its Orbital AI platform, which is tailored for energy operations.

The funding round was led by Houston-based KBR Inc., with participation from San Francisco-based Databricks Ventures. KBR’s investment was first announced in March.

KBR and Applied Computing have also entered into a multi-year agreement to deliver exclusive AI products for the energy sector. KBR already has integrated Orbital into its INSITE 3.0 platform for energy projects, and is also using the product for ammonia production.

Applied Computing’s Orbital platform combines physics-grounded intelligence with models across chemical engineering, time-series forecasting and language, according to the company. The system analyzes sensor readings and can recognize a facility’s equipment constraints and operator activity. The platform can also allow technicians to run simulations of how a change to a facility could affect the rest of its operations.

According to TechCrunch, Applied Computing will use the $20 million to further explore projects and deployments with the energy sector, hire engineering and research positions, and continue to expand internationally, potentially into the Middle East.

The company is also working on deals with a major U.S. stream operator, TechCrunch reports. And Applied Computing shared on LinkedIn that it plans to announce its first partnership with a major European oil company in the coming weeks.

“Yesterday we showed Orbital live in deployments at our demo day at the Energy Institute in London,” Callum Adamson, CEO and co-founder of Applied Computing, posted on LinkedIn on July 16. “Today, we're announcing the capital to scale it globally as well as the launch of our new offices in Houston and Bangalore. In the weeks following, there will be more announcements on our progress, partnerships and deployments.”

The company opened its Bangalore offices in December.

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