City of Houston and local health care organizations receive $4M to treat mental health in students

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Through a $4 million grant, the city of Houston will be able to provide mental health treatment to at-risk students. Educational First Steps/Facebook

The city of Houston just received a major opportunity to help grow access to mental health treatment in children.

Thanks to a four-year $4 million grant from the United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the city and its partner, Baylor College of Medicine, are launching the Be-Well Be-Connected program that provides at-risk students age six to 17 years old with mental health treatment.

The program will be led by Dr. Laurel Williams, associate professor of psychiatry at Baylor, division head for child and adolescent psychiatry and chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital. The treatment will include cognitive behavioral intervention for students with bipolar disorder and first episode psychosis, according to the release. The services will be provided in the child's home, which will ensure compliance.

"We do not have many places in Houston that have this capability to provide this level of intensity of services," Williams says in the release. "Having in-home therapy can allow the young person to stay engaged in their community and in their schools, which can promote wellness and reduction in symptoms burden more quickly."

Other Houston health centers, including Texas Children's Hospital, Harris Health System, Menninger Clinic, Harris Center, Veteran's Mental Health Care Line, Legacy Community Health Services, and DePelchin's Children's Center, will be involved with the program and the Mayor's Office of Education is the program manager of the grant.

"I created the Office of Education to support school districts in Houston because they are doing the essential work of guaranteeing that our next generation of adults is educated and ready for the future," says Mayor Sylvester Turner in the release. "The grant validates our efforts and more importantly will provide care on the frontlines of a key health issue involving young people."

Five independent school districts will also receive first level screening services and telemedical care. Families of the students receiving care will also receive support from the newly developed Texas State Child Mental Health Consortium.

"Houston and our surrounding area is primed to really take children's mental health care to the next needed level," says Williams in the release. "This SAMHSA grant opportunity coupled with the State Consortium will allow better coordination amongst services and an overall increase in available services — services that are desperately needed."

Texas doctors and researchers received millions for their transformational work in cancer prevention and treatment. Getty Images

A Texas organization has doled out millions to Houston cancer-fighting professionals

granted

Researchers at medical institutions across the state have something to celebrate. The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas has made 71 grants this week to cancer-fighting organizations that total a near $136 million.

"CPRIT's priorities of pediatric cancer research and cancers of significance to Texans highlight this large slate of awards," says Wayne Roberts, CPRIT CEO, in a release. "Investments are made across the cancer research and prevention continuum in Texas unlike any other state in the country."

New to the awards this time around is the Collaborative Action Program for Liver Cancer, which has been claimed by Baylor College of Medicine's Hashem B. El-Serag.

"Texas has the highest incidence rates of hepatocellular cancer in the nation," El-Serag says in a release from BCM. "Our CPRIT funded Center will house infrastructure to support and enhance research collaborations among liver cancer researchers; to educate providers, researchers and the general public on best practices and opportunities to reduce the burden of liver cancer; and to engage private and public entities in policy initiatives."

Houston organizations also received recruitment awards, which reward Texas organizations for bringing in great minds from across the world. According to the release, CPRIT has brought in a total of 181 scholars and 13 companies to the Lone Star State.

Of the 71 grants, 58 represent academic research, 10 prevention, and three product development research. Here are the ones awarded to Houston organizations.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

$900,000 granted for Shao-Cung Sun's research in regulation of CD8 T cell responses in antitumor immunity (Individual Investigator Research Award)
$897,483 granted for Alemayehu A. Gorfe's research in characterization and optimization of novel allosteric KRAS inhibitors (Individual Investigator Research Award)
$3 million granted for Hashem B. El-Serag's research at The Texas Collaborative Center for Hepatocellular Cancer (Collaborative Action Program to Reduce Liver Cancer Mortality in Texas: Collaborative Action Center Award)
$2.46 million to Jessica Hwang for patient-centered liver cancer prevention in the Houston community (Collaborative Action Program to Reduce Liver Cancer Mortality in Texas: Investigator-Initiated Research Awards)
$3.51 million for Kevin McBride's Recombinant Antibody Production Core at Science Park
$199,804 granted for Andrea Viale's epithelial memory of resolved inflammation as a driver of pancreatic cancer progression (High Impact High Risk Award)
$6 million for the recruitment of Christopher Flowers, M.D. (Recruitment of Established Investigator Awards)
$2 million for the recruitment of Kevin Nead, MD, MPhil (Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members Awards)
$2 million for the recruitment of Alison Taylor, PhD (Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members Awards)
$2 million for the recruitment of Mackenzie Wehner, MD, MPhil (Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members Awards)

Baylor College of Medicine

$5.38 million granted for Steven J. Ludtke's new capabilities for cancer research in the TMC CryoEM Cores (Core Facility Support Awards)
$1.35 million granted for Bryan M. Burt's novel endoscope-cleaning port for minimally invasive cancer surgery (Early Translational Research Awards)
$199,500 granted for Yohannes T. Ghebre's Topical Esomeprazole for Radiation-induced Dermatitis (High Impact High Risk Award)
$199,920 granted for Robin Parihar's targeting of cancer associated fibroblasts with anti-IL-11-secreting CAR T cells (High Impact High Risk Award)
$2 million for the recruitment of Umesh Jadhav, PhD (Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members Awards)
$2 million for the recruitment of Stanley Lee, PhD (Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members Awards)
$2 million for the recruitment of Ang Li, MD (Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members Awards)
$1.29 million for Jane R. Montealegre's expansion of "a Community Network for Cancer Prevention to Increase HPV Vaccine Uptake and Tobacco Prevention in a Medically Underserved Pediatric Population"

Texas Medical Center

$5.44 million granted for William McKeon's Business-Driven Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics (Core Facility Support Awards)

The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

$5.95 million granted for Zhiqiang An's Advanced Cancer Antibody Drug Modalities Core Facility (Core Facility Support Awards)
$2 million granted for Qingyun Liu's discovery and development of novel peptibody-drug conjugate for treating cancers of the digestive system (Early Translational Research Awards)
$199,998 granted for Leng Han's expression landscape and biomedical significance of transfer RNAs in cancer (High Impact High Risk Award)
$2 million for Lara S. Savas' Salud en Mis Manos that delivers "Evidence-Based Breast & Cervical Cancer Prevention Services to Latinas in Underserved Texas South and Gulf Coast Communities"

The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

$3.55 million granted for William K. Russell's A Targeted Proteomics and Metabolomics Mass Spectrometry Core Facility at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (Core Facility Support Awards)
$199,996 granted for Brendan Prideaux's novel cellular-level imaging approach to assess payload drug distribution in tumors following administration of targeted drug delivery systems (High Impact High Risk Award)
$200,000 granted for Casey W. Wright's targeting ARNT and RBFOX2 alternative splicing as a novel treatment modality in lymphoid malignancies (High Impact High Risk Award)

The Methodist Hospital Research Institute

$200,000 granted for Robert Rostomily's development of a mini-pig glioma model and validation of human clinical relevance (High Impact High Risk Award)

Texas Southern University

$200,000 for Song Gao's alleviating SN-38-induced late-onset diarrhea by preserving local UGTs in the colon (High Impact High Risk Award)

University of Houston

$200,000 granted for Sergey S. Shevkoplyas' Novel High-Throughput Microfluidic Device for Isolating T-cells Directly from Whole Blood to Simplify Manufacturing of Cellular Therapies (High Impact High Risk Award)

Rice University

$2 million for the recruitment of Jiaozhi (George) Lu, PhD (Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members Awards)
$1.67 million for the recruitment of Vicky Yao, PhD (Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members Awards)

The Rose

$2 million for Bernice Joseph's Empower Her To Care Expansion

Legacy Community Health Services

$999,276 for Charlene Flash's "Increasing Breast and Colorectal Cancer Screening Rates for the Medically Underserved using Population Health Strategies at a Multi-County FQHC"

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Rice University breaks ground on new innovation hub, The Arc

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Construction is officially underway on Rice University's The Arc in Houston’s Ion District.

The university broke ground on the 200,000-square-foot research, corporate innovation and office building on Nov. 4. The facility will share a plaza with the existing Ion building, fostering collaboration within the innovation space, according to Rice.

“The Arc will bring Rice’s extraordinary research and talent and Houston’s impactful innovation ecosystem into even closer connection with the industries and innovators working to solve some of the world’s most consequential challenges,” Rice President Reginald DesRoches said in an announcement. “That constant exchange of ideas and expertise will help move discoveries more rapidly from the laboratory to real-world impact.”

Construction is scheduled to be completed by Q2 2028. Rice Real Estate Co. is developing the project, and Rice University will occupy about 80,000 square feet in the building (about 40 percent). Preleasing has begun, with floor plans ranging from 28,000 to 31,000 square feet.

The Arc will feature conference and meeting spaces, an amenity lounge, fitness center, outdoor plazas, underground parking, and on-site retail and dining, according to the release.

It aims to host tenants focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning, data science, robotics, quantum science and engineering and energy, including Rice's new AI Foundry.

Rice says the AI Foundry will be a space where university experts and partners can support organizations with AI challenges. Rice recently committed to hiring 75 new AI-focused faculty and announced plans to launch a new Master of Artificial Intelligence (MAI) next fall.

“The AI Foundry is exactly the kind of collaboration the Arc is designed to enable,” Amy Dittmar, the Howard R. Hughes Provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Rice, added in the release. “By bringing Rice researchers together with industry partners in a shared environment, we can accelerate the movement of ideas from research into practical applications while helping organizations build the capabilities they need to succeed as AI continues to evolve.

Developers of The Arc are targeting LEED Gold certification by incorporating smart building automation and energy-saving features into the project's design. Rice first announced the project in September 2025.

Rendering courtesy Bogza

Houston battery tech startup FlowCellutions acquired by Katy energy co.

M&A

Katy-based TerraFlow Energy, an energy storage and infrastructure company, has acquired Houston-based battery technology startup FlowCellutions. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

FlowCellutions still operates under its established name, but with the tagline “A TerraFlow Energy Company.” Becca Segel, founder and CEO of FlowCellutions, now runs the business as its president.

FlowCellutions specializes in electrochemical sensing, diagnostics, analytics, and testing that offer insights into battery chemistry, charging capabilities, and system performance.

“FlowCellutions has always been focused on developing better ways to understand what is happening inside a flow battery and using that information to improve how these systems perform,” Segal said in a press release. “Joining TerraFlow gives us the opportunity to apply that work at a much larger scale while continuing to build the capabilities and expertise that make FlowCellutions unique.”

The FlowCellutions platform supports data centers and other heavy users of power. It’s designed to help reduce operating costs, prevent failures and costly downtime, and extend battery lifetime from about seven years to more than 30 years.

Segel founded the company in 2022. A member of Greentown Labs, the company raised more than $2 million in non-dilutive funding and received $1.5 million in National Science Foundation funding earlier this year.

FlowCellutions is one of five finalists in the Energy Transition Business category of InnovationMap’s 2026 Houston Innovation Awards.

“FlowCellutions brings a depth of scientific and technical expertise that fits naturally with where TerraFlow is going,” Jon Parrella, CEO of TerraFlow, said in the release.

“As we move from developing these systems to deploying them at commercial scale, understanding performance at a deeper level matters,” he said. “Bringing FlowCellutions into TerraFlow strengthens that capability and gives both teams more opportunity to advance the technology.”TerraFlow, founded in 2024, develops long-duration energy storage and power infrastructure for data centers, industrial facilities, utilities and other large power consumers.

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

3 fast-growing Houston scaleups named Innovation Awards finalists

meet the finalists

From IPOs to groundbreakings, some of Houston's most innovative companies reached major milestones this year.

As part of the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards, our Scaleup of the Year category honors innovative later-stage startups that have recently reached a significant milestone in company growth. Three scaleups have been named finalists for the 2026 award.

Read more about these businesses, their founders and their breakthrough technologies below. The 2026 winners will be announced on InnovationMap.com in mid-November.

Erock

Energy infrastructure company Erock, previously known as Enchanted Rock, develops dual-purpose microgrids that rely on natural gas and renewable natural gas to produce lower carbon emissions and air pollutants than diesel generators. Its products can provide bridge power before grid interconnection, backup power during outages and dispatchable capacity that supports long-term grid reliability. The company has more than 1,100 megawatts of installed capacity and over 20 years of experience serving commercial, municipal and large-scale technology customers.

Erock completed its initial public offering this year, raising approximately $600 million in gross proceeds. It also grew its contracted power system sales backlog to approximately $1.7 billion, up tenfold year-over-year, with production sold out through 2028, according to the company's application. The company secured a major equipment order from Anthropic, began construction of the 366-megawatt El Paso Electric project supporting Meta's data center campus, and started assembly operations at its Hyperion facility in Cypress, Texas.

Hertha Metals

Hertha Metals produces lower-cost, lower-emission steel and high-purity iron. The company has developed a single-step process that uses natural gas as a direct reductant instead of metallurgical coal, which cuts production costs by more than 25 percent and emissions by up to 50 percent, according to the company. The same process produces high-purity iron needed for high-purity steels and rare earth magnets. The company says it aims to "re-industrialize America’s production of critical materials."

Hertha Metals was founded by CEO Laureen Meroueh in 2022 and emerged from stealth last year with more than $17 million in venture capital funding. The company closed a $133.65 million Series A this month and also broke ground on its $100M high-purity iron factory known as Chalyx in Conroe.

Venus Aerospace

Spacetech company Venus Aerospace is developing a high-thrust rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) that replaces the subsonic combustion used in conventional rocket engines. The RDRE is a compact, simpler engine that can deliver up to 15 percent greater efficiency for defense and space applications. It completed its first U.S. flight test of the engine last summer.

Venus Aerospace was founded in 2020 by CEO Cassie Duggleby and CTO Andrew Duggleby. It raised a $20 million Series A in 2022 and $42 million Series A2 in 2025. It closed a $91 million Series B earlier this year and expanded its leadership team. The company is working toward longer-duration and higher-thrust testing and advancing its flight program.

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