3​ Houston innovators to know this week

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This week's innovators to know roundup includes Roberta Schwartz of Houston Methodist, Jani Tuomi of imaware, and Jill Chapman of Insperity. Photos courtesy

Editor's note: In today's Monday roundup of Houston innovators, I'm introducing you to three innovators across industries — including some with COVID-19 news.

Roberta Schwartz, executive vice president of Houston Methodist Hospital

Roberta Schwartz is leading the innovation initiative at Houston Methodist. Courtesy of Houston Methodist

Houston Methodist and its Center for Innovation — led by Roberta Schwartz, executive vice president of Houston Methodist Hospital — has been in the innovation news around Houston in a few ways. First, the health care innovation hub was recognized with the Listies award for corporate innovation and Schwartz accepted the award on behalf of her team.

Last week, Houston Methodist was announced to be on the short list for the COVID-19 vaccine being developed and distributed by Pfizer.

And finally, Schwartz shared details about a new voice technology the hospital has implemented into their operating rooms. The technology uses ambient listening to help surgeons operate hands free from typing or note taking and focus on their patient. Read more.

Jani Tuomi, co-founder of imaware

Jani Tuomi, co-founder of imaware, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss his company's, early disease screening, COVID-19 testing, and more. Photo courtesy of imaware

As COVID-19 was emerging as an international threat across January and February, Jani Tuomi and his team at imaware — a Houston health tech startup providing at-home testing for chronic conditions — quickly jumped on a way to provide at-home coronavirus testing.

"Right away there was an amazing reception," Tuomi says, adding that big companies were looking to provide their employees on-site training. "There was way more need for testing than supply was available."

Imaware formed strategic partnerships with other Texas companies, including Austin-based startup Wheel — the telemedicine partner. Basically, users take a quick assessment online and if they are high risk, a health care worker is deployed to the patient's site to conduct the test. Once finished, the lab analyzes the sample and telemedicine professionals reach out with results and next steps. Read more and stream the podcast.

Jill Chapman, senior performance consultant with Insperity

Jill Chapman is a senior performance consultant with Insperity. Photo courtesy of Insperity

With Thanksgiving in the rearview, the holiday season is in full swing. And, as some companies in Houston have either partially or completely resumed in-office workdays, businesses might also be looking to spread some holiday cheer around the workspace. Jill Chapman, a senior performance consultant with Insperity, shared in a guest column for InnovationMap her ideas for safe virtual and in-person festivities.

"Business leaders should consider hosting holiday celebrations that honor their employees and align with their ongoing safety protocols," she writes. "For companies that continue to conduct in-person business, holiday celebrations may be safely held outside in Houston's temperate climate. For companies that plan to proceed with virtual celebrations, think outside the box for developing an event that colleagues will enjoy." Read more.

Jani Tuomi, co-founder of imaware, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss his company's, early disease screening, COVID-19 testing, and more. Photo courtesy of imaware

Houston startup is fostering the future of chronic disease prevention and treatment

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 59

A family illness got Jani Tuomi thinking — why does treatment of chronic conditions seem like too little, too late? When his brother fell ill, he wondered if more could have been done preemptively.

"The doctors were really good at treating him — but the question I had was why couldn't we have screened for this in advance," Tuomi says on this week's episode if the Houston Innovators Podcast.

He entertained his intuition and started researching, which transitioned into co-founding imaware, a digital health platform that focuses on early identification of chronic conditions — such as diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune issues. What Tuomi and his team found was that these chronic diseases come with biomarkers you can measure before you see symptoms.

Now, imaware exists to provide at-home blood tests for everything from heart health and allergies to thyroid and arthritis screening. And, as COVID-19 was emerging as an international threat across January and February, Tuomi says his team quickly jumped on a way to provide at-home coronavirus testing.

"Right away there was an amazing reception," Tuomi says, adding that big companies were looking to provide their employees on-site training. "There was way more need for testing than supply was available."

Imaware formed strategic partnerships with other Texas companies, including Austin-based startup Wheel — the telemedicine partner. Basically, users take a quick assessment online and if they are high risk, a health care worker is deployed to the patient's site to conduct the test. Once finished, the lab analyzes the sample and telemedicine professionals reach out with results and next steps.

Business for imaware has been booming, and Tuomi has had to scale his business virtually amid the pandemic. Imaware also has an office in Austin, which is focused on the digital side of business.

Looking forward, Tuomi says he's planning on zooming in on the various ways patients were affected by COVID-19, and this summer imaware formed a partnership with Texas A&M University researchers to begin that investigation. Tuomi says he doesn't expect the finalized data until early next year, but what he says the research seems to show is people reacted differently to the disease, and those reactions seem to relate to underlying or chronic conditions — the same conditions imaware has developed early testing for.

"Before COVID, imaware's mission was to identify individuals with chronic conditions earlier, so we're going to double down on our tests," Tuomi says.

Tuomi shares more about the lessons learned from turning around the COVID test so quickly, as well as some of the ways the pandemic has affected the health care industry as a whole. Listen to the full interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.


Houston-based imaware, which has an at-home COVID-19 testing process, is working with Texas A&M University on researching how the virus affects the human body. Getty Images

Houston health tech startup with at-home COVID-19 test teams up with Texas university for research

be aware

An ongoing medical phenomenon is determining how COVID-19 affects people differently — especially in terms of severity. A new partnership between a Houston-based digital health platform and Texas A&M University is looking into differences in individual risk factors for the virus.

Imaware, which launched its at-home coronavirus testing kit in April, is using its data and information collected from the testing process for this new study on how the virus affects patients differently.

"As patient advocates, we want to aid in the search to understand more about why some patients are more vulnerable than others to the deadly complications of COVID-19," says Jani Tuomi, co-founder of imaware, in a press release. "Our current sample collection process is an efficient way to provide longitudinal prospectively driven data for research and to our knowledge, is the only such approach that is collecting, assessing, and biobanking specimens in real time."

Imaware uses a third-party lab to conduct the tests at patients' homes following the Center for Disease Control's guidelines and protocol. During the test, the medical professional takes additional swabs for the study. The test is then conducted by Austin-based Wheel, a telemedicine group.

Should the patient receive positive COVID-19 results, they are contacted by a representative of Wheel with further instructions. They are also called by a member of a team led by Dr. Rebecca Fischer, an infectious disease expert and epidemiologist and laboratory scientist at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, to grant permission to be a part of the study.

Once a part of the study, the patient remains in contact with Fischer's team, which tracks the spread and conditions of the virus in the patient. One thing the researchers are looking for is the patients' responses to virus complications caused by an overabundance of cytokines, according to the press release. Cytokines are proteins in the body that fight viruses and infections, and, if not working properly, they can "trigger an over-exuberant inflammatory response" that can cause potentially deadly issues with lung and organ failure or worse, per the release.

"We believe strongly in supporting this research, as findings from the field can be implemented to improve clinical processes-- helping even more patients," says Wheel's executive medical director, Dr. Rafid Fadul.

Houston-based Imaware has launched at-home testing that can identify if the patient has — or even had — the coronavirus. Photo via imaware.health

Houston health tech startup launches game-changing, at-home coronavirus testing

be aware

Politicians, scientists, public health officials, and others continue to stress the need for widespread testing to tame the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Houston-based startup Imaware, an at-home health testing platform, recently rolled out an at-home coronavirus test for high-risk people, such as someone with both a fever and recent exposure to someone infected with the virus. Now, it's gearing up to offer an at-home test designed to spot the presence of coronavirus antibodies in your blood.

Experts view antibody testing as a key to corralling the virus and rebooting the virus-crushed U.S. economy. However, some skeptics fear the benefits of antibody testing are being oversold.

As explained by Health.com, a nasal swab test can detect a coronavirus infection. But a blood test can pinpoint whether a person has been exposed to the novel coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 respiratory illness, and might now be immune to it.

Jani Tuomi, co-founder of Imaware, says his company is working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on approval of Imaware's antibody test. The in-home blood test might be available as early as May.

"We're still trying to make sure that everything checks out and validation is completed," Tuomi says, "but it looks like it's headed in the right direction."

In early April, the FDA approved the first test in the U.S. to detect coronavirus antibodies.

Tuomi says the process for Imaware's coronavirus antibody test will be similar to the one for the coronavirus detection test. Both tests, for instance, will be administered by licensed clinicians.

Here's how the basic test works.

To request a coronavirus test, someone completes a 10-question assessment at imaware.health. Austin-based startup Wheel, Imaware's telemedicine partner, created the online assessment.

Someone is given the go-ahead for testing if, as determined by a licensed health care professional, he or she falls into certain risk categories. For instance, somebody who's been exposed to a person with coronavirus and is over 60 years old would be approved for a test.

If health insurance covers the test or a patient pays for it entirely out of pocket, the test costs $135. (The home-based antibody test will cost about $120 to $125.) Public health agencies, including the Houston Health Department, can authorize a test for someone who can't afford it.

A trained health care professional goes to a patient's home to collect a test sample (by taking a nasal swab for the coronavirus test or drawing blood for the antibody test). A CDC-authorized lab then tests the sample. If needed, a board-certified health care professional can provide post-diagnosis care.

Results of a coronavirus test typically are available within three days. Tuomi says he hopes the results window for the test can be narrowed to between one and two days by the end of April.

"As a patient-advocate company, we are uniquely poised to be part of the testing shortage solution in Texas," Tuomi says in a March 23 release announcing the Imaware coronavirus swab test. "Our online platform, telemedicine partner, and in-home sample collection empower patients to take control of their health and access COVID-19 testing from the comfort of home."

Founded in 2018, Imaware employs 14 people. Others involved in the testing process, such as in-home testing clinicians and telemedicine experts, work for third-party partners. As the company adds to its testing lineup, Tuomi envisions the workforce rising to around 30 to 40 people by the end of 2020.

Earlier this year, Imaware (whose legal name is Microdrop LLC) had concentrated on home-based remote screening and monitoring for conditions like celiac disease and heart disease. But once it became clear that the coronavirus pandemic would be striking the U.S., the company shifted to coronavirus testing and, now, to antibody testing.

Before Imaware jumped into coronavirus testing, Tuomi performed a swab test on himself and realized that it wasn't feasible for anyone to do self-testing. On top of that, evidence surfaced that self-collection of test samples was producing a lot of false-negative results, he says. Subsequently, the federal government blocked self-testing for the coronavirus.

Today, health care professionals handle Imaware's at-home coronavirus testing and will handle the at-home antibody testing. The testing initially launched in Houston then expanded to the rest of Texas.

Tens of thousands of people have done coronavirus self-assessments through Imaware's online tool, Tuomi says. Far fewer people — in the hundreds — have actually fallen into high-risk categories based on the self-assessments and then have qualified for testing.

Tuomi says that as testing capabilities grow, Imaware will be able to accommodate people who fit into medium-risk coronavirus categories. Also, the company plans to offer its coronavirus test in states that neighbor Texas. Imaware hopes to provide its antibody test throughout the U.S.

In tandem with the public testing, Imaware teamed up with Austin-based energy tech startup RigUp to enable daily coronavirus screening at oil and gas jobsites. Imaware and RigUp are piloting the screening with several RigUp customers; they hope it eventually can be supplied nationwide.

"A cornerstone of the Imaware solution is the patient-centric approach offering superior telemedicine care from diagnosis to recovery," Tuomi says.

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Experts: Houston's VC ecosystem has set the foundation — now we need scale

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Fervo Energy went public earlier this summer. The Houston geothermal company priced its IPO at $27 per share, raised $1.89 billion, and opened the next morning at a market capitalization north of $10 billion. By most measures, it is the largest venture-backed cleantech IPO in history and an unambiguous win for Houston. It’s also a useful moment to look at where Houston's venture ecosystem stands and where it can go. The highlight: Houston's venture ecosystem has real foundations and, with increased company formation activity, can grow into the scale our city's ambitions deserve.

A Houston energy story in the national recovery

The recent uptick in Houston venture activity follows national trends. U.S. venture deal count contracted roughly 22 percent from its 2021 peak through 2024 before rebounding to about 16,700 rounds in 2025. Houston's 23 percent increase in VC funding from 2023 to 2024 is part of a national recovery of comparable magnitude over the same time window.

The energy sector is where Houston exhibits unique trends—and where the story turns clearly positive. (Houston's strong health and space sectors deserve their own separate consideration.) By deal count, energy-related rounds have accounted for 15 to 20 percent of Houston activity, roughly consistent over the past few years.

By capital, energy's share surged from about 14 percent in 2023 to over 60 percent in 2025, driven by a small number of large Houston-headquartered rounds, primarily in geothermal and related technologies. Fervo is the obvious anchor, but Sage Geosystems, Quaise Energy, Zeta Energy, Vaulted Deep, Applied Carbon and Mariana Minerals have all closed meaningful rounds. Houston is concentrated and accelerating as an energy capital market, an invaluable position to build upon.

From foundation to scale

The institutional pieces are in place. Greentown Labs, Activate, the Ion and others have built sector-specialized infrastructure most cities would struggle to assemble. Fervo itself is an alum of both Activate and Greentown Labs. Mercury Fund closed its $160 million Fund V, its largest ever. Houston Angel Network, GOOSE Capital, Fathom Fund, and broader pre-seed and seed capital coverage are here. The Houston $10 million-plus Series A list now includes 40 rounds since 2021, which break roughly into two eras. While 2021 to 2022 was biotech-heavy, with companies like Sporos Bioventures, RadioMedix, Cellenkos and Coya Therapeutics, 2024 to 2025 has tilted clearly toward energy, climate, and critical minerals, with Vaulted Deep, Applied Carbon, Mariana Minerals, Sage Geosystems and Ignis H2 Energy among them.

What’s less developed is the volume of seed-stage companies flowing into that capital. Imagine a dozen more Fervos coming out of that infrastructure over the next decade, each generating jobs, recycled founder capital, and the next wave of operators and angel investors. That is the kind of opportunity Houston has within reach if we build the company-formation pipeline to feed it. To be relevant on the national stage as a venture market, and to drive an economy the size of Houston's into the 2030s, the city needs to be doing closer to 20 Series A rounds per month rather than per year. That throughput implies roughly 1,000 seed rounds per year, feeding the funnel at a 20 percent to 30 percent graduation rate. Reaching such throughput depends on how many new founders Houston produces and how quickly our innovation ecosystem can help them achieve lift-off.

Houston in context

The comparative picture brings the scaling challenge into focus. Between 2021 and 2024, Houston-area startups closed between 126 and 153 disclosed venture rounds per year, against a national count between 9,854 and 14,125. That places Houston at a little over 1 percent of the U.S. deal count. For comparison, Austin ran about three times Houston's deal count each year.

At the Series A level, Houston closed between 12 and 24 rounds in any given year. The median Houston Series A across the period was about $10.7 million, compared with $15.4 million in San Francisco. Houston founders are raising fewer and smaller Series A rounds than founders in peer metros, which points directly to where Houston has the most room to grow.

The unicorn picture tells the same story. From 2021 through 2025, the U.S. produced 590 venture-backed unicorns. Four were Houston-based: Solugen and Axiom Space in 2021, Cart.com in 2023, and Fervo Energy in 2024. Adding HighRadius from 2020 brings Houston's all-time total to five. Austin added 19 over the same five-year window. The path from here is to make Houston's entries on lists like these less the exception and more the rule.

Where this leads

Houston has a real opportunity to become the deepest, most credible energy and climate capital market in the country, with the company formation, talent and operator density to support it. The data shows the foundation is already in place. Fervo, Solugen and the growing roster of energy-adjacent Series A graduates are proof. Fervo's IPO is the first of what should be many. Houston has not had a venture-backed cleantech liquidity event of this scale before, and the city now has one to reference, recruit against and build on. With increased company formation at the seed and pre-seed stages, a Fervo-scale outcome need not be a generational event in Houston, but instead, it can become part of a chain reaction powering the city's economy.

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Stephanie T. Schmidt, PhD, is a Venture Fellow at Energy Transition Ventures and an Executive MBA candidate at Rice University. Lawson Gow is the Chief Operating Officer of Greentown Labs. The full Houston VC landscape report is available at Energy Transition Ventures and CleanTech.org.

Sources: Crunchbase, PitchBook-NVCA, Carta

8 can't-miss Houston business and innovation events for July

where to be

Editor's note: Summer is in full swing in Houston, but the city's innovation ecosystem isn't slowing down. This month brings AI workshops, energy and manufacturing discussions, entrepreneur-focused networking, and opportunities to connect with investors and industry leaders. Here’s what not to miss and how to register. Please note: this article may be updated to add more events.

July 7 — How Oil and Gas Professionals are Building Wealth Smarter

Hear from oil and gas professionals on how to preserve wealth at this event put on by Financial Advice Center. The conversation will touch on topics like investing, taxes and retirement planning.

This event is Tuesday, July 7, from noon-1 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 7 — What AI, Cybersecurity, and Tequila Have in Common.

Join Blue People and Alpfa Houston for this engaging presentation on the advantages and risks associated with AI at the latest installment of Tech + Tequila Talk. Cybersecurity veteran Reynaldo Gonzalez will lead the conversation.

This event is Tuesday, July 7, from 5-7 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 7 — Speed to Market: Houston’s Advanced Manufacturing Edge

The Greater Houston Partnership presents a forum that explores what allows advanced manufacturing projects in Houston to move from concept to operation, where delays and bottlenecks occur, and more. Industry leaders Jennifer Clement from CliftonLarsonAllen LLP and Sarah Janes from San Jacinto College will lead the discussion.

This event is Tuesday, July 7, from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Partnership Tower. Register here.

July 9 — Capital Connections Summit

Houston City College Center for Entrepreneurship will host the Capital Connections Summit this month, with a panel discussion focused on access to capital and technical assistance for small businesses and entrepreneurs. The event will be moderated by the U.S. Small Business Administration Houston District Office and will feature lenders, nonprofit microlenders, business advisors, and entrepreneurial support organizations. A live Q&A will follow the panel.

This event is Thursday, July 9, from 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at Houston City College Central Campus. Register here.

July 9 — Upstream: Digital Tech Meetup at Second Draught

Join Timbergrove at this month's gathering of energy, operations and technology professionals from across the upstream ecosystem. Discuss challenges, explore new ideas and network over pizza and beer at Second Draught.

This event is Thursday, July 9, from 5:30–8 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 14 — Why Networking Isn’t Turning Into Deals, And What To Do Instead

Jada Powell, founder of Powell Consulting Group, will break down why networking often fails to convert into deals and what companies can do differently to turn conversations into qualified opportunities. Powell works with oil and gas, energy, and industrial companies on business development solutions. This session is part of the monthly Pipeline Series: How Oil & Gas Companies Actually Grow Revenue.

This event is Tuesday, July 14, from noon-1 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 15 — From Pilot to Performance: Building Your AI Procurement Roadmap

It's not too late to join in on the GHP's two-part AI series on moving from experimentation to implementation. In session two, explore how procurement and supply chain leaders can scale AI responsibly to create long-term business value. This event will be led by Cassye Cook Provost, founder and principal of RossGrigsby Consultancy.

This virtual event is Wednesday, July 15, from 8:30-10 a.m. Register here.

July 30 — Rice University Summer Engineering Innovation Program - Demo Day 2026

Meet the young minds and see the final team project presentations from Rice University’s Summer Engineering Innovation Program. The 10-week program challenges Rice students to solve real-world challenges using AI, digital engineering, model-based systems engineering and Industry 4.0 technologies.

This event is Thursday, July 30, from 6-8 p.m. at the Ion. Find more information here.

5 must-read innovation headlines: Houston rises among America's best cities

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Editor's note: The local innovation scene was busy in June with exciting news, from Rice's first Pew Scholar to a monumental gift for Houston Methodist. Plus, Houston is rising in the ranks of America's best cities. Here are the five most-read InnovationMap stories published June 16-30, 2026:

1. Report: Houston reclaims top 10 ranking among America's best cities

Houston skyline

Houston has made a triumphant return to America's 10 best cities for 2026, certifying the city is a cornerstone of the country's growth and economic prosperity. Houston ranks No. 9 nationwide in the annual "America's Best Cities" report from Canada-based real estate and tourism marketing firm Resonance Consultancy. Each year, the report ranks the relative qualities of livability, cultural "lovability," and economic prosperity in 393 American cities with metropolitan populations of 500,000 or more. Continue reading.

2. Houston Methodist receives record $110M gift, names future tower

Houston Methodist has received the largest gift in the health system's history to establish new funds for neurological, neuroscience, and women’s health research and treatment. The $110 million gift comes from Houston-based The Brockman Medical Research Foundation, which supports education and research in the science, medicine and healthcare fields. In response, Houston Methodist announced that it will name its forthcoming 26-story hospital facility the Brockman Centennial Tower. Continue reading.

3. Houston scientist wins prestigious Pew Scholar award for brain cancer research

Christina Tringides, an assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University, is one of 21 scientists to win a prestigious Pew Biomedical Scholar award. She is the first faculty member from Rice to win the distinction, which provides $300,000 over four years for advances in biomedicine. The awards are granted to researchers who are in the first few years at the assistant professor level. Continue reading.

4. Rice student startup lands $1.85M to launch medical drone network

Students at Rice University have developed a medical cargo drone transport system to help deliver sensitive medical supplies and improve mobile healthcare efforts. Haast Autonomous is the brainchild of graduating seniors Ege Halac, Jason Chen and Santiago Brent, who got their venture idea off the ground with help from the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie) Summer Venture Studio. The founders have developed the prototype at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) with fellow Rice researchers. Continue reading.

5. Intuitive Machines lands $1M grant to expand robotics operations

Houston-based Intuitive Machines is expanding its operations around the country. The space tech company—which has offices and labs in Texas, California, Arizona, Colorado and Maryland—announced that it has received a $1 million grant from Maryland Gov. Wes Moore through the state's Build Our Future Grant. The funding will go toward expanding Intuitive Machines’ Super Cislunar Robotics Assembly Building (Supa-CRAB) Mechanisms and Robotics Center of Excellence in Anne Arundel County. Continue reading.

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