Annual student startup competition in Houston names teams for 2023

getting pitch perfect

Here's what student teams from around the world were invited to compete in the Rice Business Plan Competition. Photo via rice.edu

Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship has named the 42 student startup teams that were extended invitations to compete in the 23rd annual Rice Business Plan Competition

The 2023 startup competition will take place on Rice University campus May 11 to 13, and the teams representing 37 universities from six countries will pitch to investors, mentors, and other industry leaders for the chance to win funding and prizes. Last year's RBPC doled out nearly $2 million in investment prizes.

This year, Rice saw its largest number of student startups applying for the RBPC internal qualifier from within campus. The university selected three to move on to compete at RBPC in May — Sygne Solutions, Neurnano Therapeutics, and Tierra Climate, which also received a total of $5,000 in cash prizes to these top three teams.

The 2023 RBPC will focus on five categories: energy, cleantech and sustainability; life science and health care solutions; consumer products and services; hard tech; and digital enterprise.

This invited companies, if they attend, will join the ranks of the 784 teams that previously competed in RBPC and have raised more than $4.6 billion in capital, as well as seen more than 50 successful exits including five IPOs.

The 2023 Rice Business Plan Competition invitees, according to Rice University's news release:

  • Active Surfaces, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Adrigo Insights, Saint Mary’s University (Canada)
  • AirSeal, Washington University in St. Louis
  • Algbio, Yeditepe University (Turkey)
  • Arch Pet Food, University of Chicago
  • Astria Biosciences, University of Pittsburgh
  • Atma Leather, Yale University
  • Atop, UCLA
  • Biome Future, University of Florida
  • BioSens8, Boston University
  • BlueVerse, Texas Tech University
  • Boardible, Northwestern University
  • Boston Quantum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • ceres plant protein cereal, Tulane University
  • Citrimer, University of Michigan
  • Dart Bioscience, University of Oxford (United Kingdom)
  • DetoXyFi, Harvard University
  • E-Sentience, Duke University
  • Edulis Therapeutics, Carnegie Mellon University
  • FluxWorks, Texas A&M University
  • Integrated Molecular Innovations, Michigan Technological University
  • Inzipio, RWTH Aachen University (Germany)
  • LoopX AI, University of Waterloo (Canada)
  • Magnify Biosciences, Carnegie Mellon University
  • MiraHeart, Johns Hopkins University
  • MyLÚA, Cornell University
  • Outmore Living, University of Texas
  • Pathways, Harvard University
  • Pediatrica Therapeutics, University of Arkansas
  • Perseus Materials, Stanford University
  • Pike Robotics, University of Texas
  • Quantanx, Arizona State University
  • Sheza, San Diego State University
  • Skali, Northwestern University
  • Sundial Solar Components, University of Utah
  • Thryft Ship, University of Georgia
  • Tierra Climate, Rice University
  • TrashTrap Sustainability Solutions, Visvesvaraya Technological University (India)
  • Unchained, North Carolina A&T State University
  • Unsmudgeable, Babson College
  • Vivicaly, University of Pennsylvania
  • Zaymo, Brigham Young University
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Rice University makes top 5 lists of best biz schools in the country

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MBA programs at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business have landed two top five rankings in The Princeton Review’s annual list of the country’s best business schools.

Rice earned a No. 4 ranking for its online MBA program and a No. 5 ranking for its MBA program in finance.

“These rankings are indicative of the high-quality education offered through all of our MBA programs. Students studying finance at Rice … are taught by faculty whose research and expertise enhances core classes and hard skills, so students are not just prepared to be successful in their careers, but they are also prepared to think critically about their roles and to lead in their industry,” Peter Rodriguez, dean of the Jones Graduate School of Business, says in a news release.

“These rankings are also indicative of our broader approach: offering students flexibility in their pursuit of an MBA, while retaining the experience of studying with world-class faculty — no matter what program they choose,” Rodriguez adds.

Rice also achieved high rankings in two other MBA categories: No. 8 for “greatest resources for women” and No. 10 for “greatest resources for minority students.”

The Princeton Review’s 2024 business school rankings are based on data from surveys of administrators at more than 400 business schools as well as surveys of 32,200 students enrolled in the schools’ MBA programs.

“The schools that made our list for 2024 all have impressive individual distinctions,” Rob Franek, The Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief, says in a news release. “What they share are three characteristics that broadly informed our criteria for these rankings: outstanding academics, robust experiential learning components and excellent career services.”

Rice also ranks as the top school for graduate entrepreneurship programs, which Princeton Review released last fall. The University of Houston ranks as No. 1 for undergraduate entrepreneurship programs.

Houston agriculture robotics co. raises $21.5M series A to grow climatetech solution

seeing green

A Houston energy tech startup has raised a $21.5 million series a round of funding to support the advancement of its automated technology that converts field wastes into stable carbon.

Applied Carbon, previously known as Climate Robotics, announced that its fresh round of funding was led by TO VC, with participation from Congruent Ventures, Grantham Foundation, Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, S2G Ventures, Overture.vc, Wireframe Ventures, Autodesk Foundation, Anglo American, Susquehanna Foundation, US Endowment for Forestry and Communities, TELUS Pollinator Fund for Good, and Elemental Excelerator.

The series A funding will support the deployment of its biochar machines across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

"Multiple independent studies indicate that converting crop waste into biochar has the potential to remove gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year, while creating trillions of dollars in value for the world's farmers," Jason Aramburu, co-founder and CEO of Applied Carbon, says in a news release. "However, there is no commercially available technology to convert these wastes at low cost.

"Applied Carbon's patented in-field biochar production system is the first solution that can convert crop waste into biochar at a scale and a cost that makes sense for broad acre farming," he continues.

Applied Carbon rebranded in June shortly after being named a top 20 finalist in XPRIZE's four-year, $100 million global Carbon Removal Competition. The company also was named a semi-finalist and awarded $50,000 from the Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchase Pilot Prize program in May.

"Up to one-third of excess CO2 that has accumulated in the atmosphere since the start of human civilization has come from humans disturbing soil through agriculture," Joshua Phitoussi, co-founder and managing partner at TO VC, adds. "To reach our net-zero objectives, we need to put that carbon back where it belongs.

"Biochar is unique in its potential to do so at a permanence and price point that are conducive to mass-scale adoption of carbon dioxide removal solutions, while also leaving farmers and consumers better off thanks to better soil health and nutrition," he continues. "Thanks to its technology and business model, Applied Carbon is the only company that turns that potential into reality."

The company's robotic technology works in field, picking up agricultural crop residue following harvesting and converts it into biochar in a single pass. The benefits included increasing soil health, improving agronomic productivity, and reducing lime and fertilizer requirements, while also providing a carbon removal and storage solution.

"We've been looking at the biochar sector for over a decade and Applied Carbon's in-field proposition is incredibly compelling," adds Joshua Posamentier, co-founder and managing partner of Congruent Ventures. "The two most exciting things about this approach are that it profitably swings the agricultural sector from carbon positive to carbon negative and that it can get to world-scale impact, on a meaningful timeline, while saving farmers money."

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This article originally ran on EnergyCapital.

3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

Editor's note: Every week, I introduce you to a handful of Houston innovators to know recently making headlines with news of innovative technology, investment activity, and more. This week's batch includes a Houston chemist, a cleaning product founder, and a UH researcher.


James Tour, chemist at Rice University

The four-year agreement will support the team’s ongoing work on removing PFAS from soil. Photo via Rice University

A Rice University chemist James Tour has secured a new $12 million cooperative agreement with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center on the team’s work to efficiently remove pollutants from soil.

The four-year agreement will support the team’s ongoing work on removing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from contaminated soil through its rapid electrothermal mineralization (REM) process, according to a statement from Rice.

“This is a substantial improvement over previous methods, which often suffer from high energy and water consumption, limited efficiency and often require the soil to be removed,” Tour says. Read more.

Kristy Phillips, founder and CEO of Clean Habits

What started as a way to bring natural cleaning products in from overseas has turned into a promising application for more sustainable agriculture solutions. Photo via LinkedIn

When something is declared clean, one question invariably springs to mind: just how clean is clean?

Then it is, “What metrics decide what’s clean and what’s not?”

To answer those questions, one must abandon the subjective and delve into the scientific — and that’s where Clean Habits come in. The company has science on its side with Synbio, a patented cleaning formula that combines a unique blend of prebiotics and probiotics for their signature five-day clean.

“Actually, we are a synbiotic, which is a prebiotic and a probiotic fused together,” says Kristy Phillips, founder and CEO of Clean Habits. “And that's what gives us the five-day clean, and we also have the longest shelf life — three years — of any probiotic on the market.” Read more.

Jiming Bao, professor at University of Houston

Th innovative method involves techniques that will be used to measure and visualize temperature distributions without direct contact with the subject being photographed. Photo via UH.edu

A University of Houston professor of electrical and computer engineering, Jiming Bao, is improving thermal imaging and infrared thermography with a new method to measure the continuous spectrum of light.

His innovative method involves techniques that will be used to measure and visualize temperature distributions without direct contact with the subject being photographed, according to the university. The challenges generally faced by conventional thermal imaging is addressed, as the new study hopes to eliminate temperature dependence, and wavelength.

“We designed a technique using a near-infrared spectrometer to measure the continuous spectrum and fit it using the ideal blackbody radiation formula,” Bao tells the journal Device. “This technique includes a simple calibration step to eliminate temperature- and wavelength-dependent emissivity.” Read more.

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