Why this Houston health care professional jumped in the founder seat to disrupt the industry

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Ayoade Joy Ademuyewo founded Lokum last year to create a solution to better connecting medical specialists with health care facilities nationwide. Photo courtesy of Lokum

Ayoade Joy Ademuyewo says that anesthesiology is “the coolest thing in the world.” That’s why she became a certified registered nurse anesthetist.

And that career, which she says is “the perfect blend of science and art,” led to the creation of her startup, Lokum.

Lokum App is a matchmaking engine that aims to connect Ademuyewo’s peers with jobs. She explains that before her innovation, staffing for nurse anesthetists traditionally owed to job boards 30 years older than she was or to recruitment agencies that left them at a disadvantage.

“I didn't want to use that job board because it was sort of difficult to use and I didn't want to use it and a lot of other people felt the same way,” she recalls.

When a desperate friend asked for her help navigating the terrain of finding CRNA work as an independent contractor, Ademuyewo says the wheels began turning in her mind.

“I just thought, 'Why can't I open up my phone and see all of the available jobs to me, based on my preferences and my skills? And I can easily select from them to go to my next job.' And that's sort of where the questions started. And I just kept asking those questions. And I think about two or three years into asking the questions I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I think I'm starting a company,'” Ademuyewo says.

In the hours that she wasn’t in surgery, the CRNA began doing market research.

“As I was studying the market, and mapping it out, these really complex mind maps started to happen. And it was almost a natural conclusion that the more you understand the problem, the more the solution starts to appear to you,” she explains.

And she saw that the obvious solution was also potentially a big opportunity for her to create something entirely new — neither a job board nor an agency, but something entirely new. Ademuyewo calls Lokum a “matchmaking engine.” It takes the preferences, specialties and skills of CRNAs like her and matches them to jobs that make sense for them. To date, the pilot has connected users with around 200 hospitals and clinics in 20 states.

Fortunately, because there are so few CRNAs in practice, they are a unified bunch.

“It’s a really well-networked profession,” says Ademuyewo. “ I'm lucky to be in a profession where what we do is really special and really specialized.”

Because she was already part of the tight knit community, the founder had no trouble finding pilot customers. She worked with Houston-based Octaria Software to engineer the technical side of the app, as well as another local cybersecurity firm to work on infrastructure.

Lots of big news has come for Ademuyewo in the first half of 2024. She participated in this year’s cohort of the Google for Startups Accelerator Program-North America, which she says helped to gain traction in her fundraising amid a bear market.

The result? Early this month, Lokum announced a raise of $700,000 in pre-seed funding, which will be allocated to improving and enhancing the existing technology. Those funds came from Houston investors including Aileen Allen, of the Houston Angel Network, Mercury, and The Artemis Fund; and Matt Miller, former Liongard product executive, as well as from Houston-based VC firm South Loop Ventures. More came from the non-local JP Morgan and Techstars.

Today, Ademuyewo is devoted full-time to Lokum, though she still practices her favorite combination of science and art on weekends in order to maintain her licensure.

“I will always be clinical, that will never change,” she says. “Part of that is just staying close to the problem and the people who are experiencing it, I think that is exactly the right thing for me to be doing.”

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Ayoade Joy Ademuyewo founded Lokum last year to create a solution to better connecting medical specialists with health care facilities nationwide. Photo courtesy of Lokum

Houston innovator raises pre-seed funding for health care staffing platform

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A Houston health care innovator is celebrating an oversubscribed round of pre-seed funding to improve on her startup's unique staffing platform.

Ayoade Joy Ademuyewo founded Lokum last year to create a solution to better connecting medical specialists with health care facilities nationwide. The new platform, which cuts out the middleman and lowers staffing costs, raised $700,000 in pre-seed funding that will go toward further development of the technology.

"Healthcare organizations spend $26 billion annually to support a crippling dependence on third-party agencies for connecting with clinical staff," Ademuyewo says in a news release. "Technological solutions that are pointed precisely to streamline and strengthen the relationships between highly specialized clinicians and their future employers are vital to alleviating this detrimental dependance, and central to our mission.

"I'm incredibly proud to have earned the trust of my colleagues, investors, team, and mentors in solving this complex problem."

Ademuyewo raised the round with support from local investors, including Aileen Allen, an adviser and investor associated with the Houston Angel Network, Mercury, and The Artemis Fund; and Matt Miller, former Liongard product executive, as well as from Houston-based VC firm South Loop Ventures. Techstars and JP Morgan also contributed to the round.

"Lokum has found a way to disrupt an organically inefficient and expensive market with an elegant solution that doesn't just save hospitals time and money, but also increases the pool of specialty providers in a market that is consistently strapped for such expertise," Jerry Varnado, venture partner at South Loop Ventures, adds. "This is what disruption in healthcare looks like — scalable commercial solutions that contribute towards better patient care, and we're happy to be part of Lokum's journey."

Ademuyewo has the idea to start Lokum after her experience as an independent contract nurse anesthetist amid the height of the pandemic as she witnessed third-party recruitment agencies take advantage of medical professionals like herself.

Now, the platform's early pilot, which focuses on clinicians in anesthesiology, has served clients across nearly 200 hospitals and surgery centers in 20 states. Ademuyewo also participated in 2024’s cohort for the Google for Startups Accelerator Program-North America, where she spent 10 weeks developing and building her company and platform.

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5 Houston scientists named winners of prestigious Hill Prizes 2026

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Five Houston scientists were recognized for their "high-risk, high-reward ideas and innovations" by Lyda Hill Philanthropies and the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology (TAMEST).

The 2026 Hill Prizes provide seed funding to top Texas researchers. This year's prizes were given out in seven categories, including biological sciences, engineering, medicine, physical sciences, public health and technology, and the new artificial intelligence award.

Each recipient’s institution or organization will receive $500,000 in direct funding from Dallas-based Lyda Hill Philanthropies. The organization has also committed to giving at least $1 million in discretionary research funding on an ad hoc basis for highly-ranked applicants who were not selected as recipients.

“It is with great pride that I congratulate this year’s Hill Prizes recipients. Their pioneering spirit and unwavering dedication to innovation are addressing some of the most pressing challenges of our time – from climate resilience and energy sustainability to medical breakthroughs and the future of artificial intelligence,” Lyda Hill, founder of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, said in a news release.

The 2026 Houston-area recipients include:

Biological Sciences: Susan M. Rosenberg, Baylor College of Medicine

Rosenberg and her team are developing ways to fight antibiotic resistance. The team will use the funding to screen a 14,000-compound drug library to identify additional candidates, study their mechanisms and test their ability to boost antibiotic effectiveness in animal models. The goal is to move toward clinical trials, beginning with veterans suffering from recurrent infections.

Medicine: Dr. Raghu Kalluri, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Kalluri is developing eye drops to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss globally. Kalluri will use the funding to accelerate studies and support testing for additional ocular conditions. He was also named to the National Academy of Inventors’ newest class of fellows last month.

Engineering: Naomi J. Halas, Rice University

Co-recipeints: Peter J. A. Nordlander and Hossein Robatjazi, Rice University

Halas and her team are working to advance light-driven technologies for sustainable ammonia synthesis. The team says it will use the funding to improve light-driven catalysts for converting nitrogen into ammonia, refine prototype reactors for practical deployment and partner with industry collaborators to advance larger-scale applications. Halas and Nordlander are co-founders of Syzygy Plasmonics, and Robatjazi serves as vice president of research for the company.

The other Texas-based recipients include:

  • Artificial Intelligence: Kristen Grauman, The University of Texas at Austin
  • Physical Sciences: Karen L. Wooley, Texas A&M University; Co-Recipient: Matthew Stone, Teysha Technologies
  • Public Health: Dr. Elizabeth C. Matsui, The University of Texas at Austin and Baylor College of Medicine
  • Technology: Kurt W. Swogger, Molecular Rebar Design LLC; Co-recipients: Clive Bosnyak, Molecular Rebar Design, and August Krupp, MR Rubber Business and Molecular Rebar Design LLC

Recipients will be recognized Feb. 2 during the TAMEST 2026 Annual Conference in San Antonio. They were determined by a committee of TAMEST members and endorsed by a committee of Texas Nobel and Breakthrough Prize Laureates and approved by the TAMEST Board of Directors.

“On behalf of TAMEST, we are honored to celebrate the 2026 Hill Prizes recipients. These outstanding innovators exemplify the excellence and ambition of Texas science and research,” Ganesh Thakur, TAMEST president and a distinguished professor at the University of Houston, added in the release. “Thanks to the visionary support of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, the Hill Prizes not only recognize transformative work but provide the resources to move bold ideas from the lab to life-changing solutions. We are proud to support their journeys and spotlight Texas as a global hub for scientific leadership.”

Investment bank opens new Houston office focused on energy sector

Investment bank Cohen & Co. Capital Markets has opened a Houston office to serve as the hub of its energy advisory business and has tapped investment banking veteran Rahul Jasuja as the office’s leader.

Jasuja joined Cohen & Co. Capital Markets, a subsidiary of financial services company Cohen & Co., as managing director, and head of energy and energy transition investment banking. Cohen’s capital markets arm closed $44 billion worth of deals last year.

Jasuja previously worked at energy-focused Houston investment bank Mast Capital Advisors, where he was managing director of investment banking. Before Mast Capital, Jasuja was director of energy investment banking in the Houston office of Wells Fargo Securities.

“Meeting rising [energy] demand will require disciplined capital allocation across traditional energy, sustainable fuels, and firm, dispatchable solutions such as nuclear and geothermal,” Jasuja said in a news release. “Houston remains the center of gravity where capital, operating expertise, and execution come together to make that transition investable.”

The Houston office will focus on four energy verticals:

  • Energy systems such as nuclear and geothermal
  • Energy supply chains
  • Energy-transition fuel and technology
  • Traditional energy
“We are making a committed investment in Houston because we believe the infrastructure powering AI, defense, and energy transition — from nuclear to rare-earth technology — represents the next secular cycle of value creation,” Jerry Serowik, head of Cohen & Co. Capital Markets, added in the release.

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCaptialHTX.com.

MD Anderson makes AI partnership to advance precision oncology

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Few experts will disagree that data-driven medicine is one of the most certain ways forward for our health. However, actually adopting it comes at a steep curve. But what if using the technology were democratized?

This is the question that SOPHiA GENETICS has been seeking to answer since 2011 with its universal AI platform, SOPHiA DDM. The cloud-native system analyzes and interprets complex health care data across technologies and institutions, allowing hospitals and clinicians to gain clinically actionable insights faster and at scale.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has just announced its official collaboration with SOPHiA GENETICS to accelerate breakthroughs in precision oncology. Together, they are developing a novel sequencing oncology test, as well as creating several programs targeted at the research and development of additional technology.

That technology will allow the hospital to develop new ways to chart the growth and changes of tumors in real time, pick the best clinical trials and medications for patients and make genomic testing more reliable. Shashikant Kulkarni, deputy division head for Molecular Pathology, and Dr. J. Bryan, assistant professor, will lead the collaboration on MD Anderson’s end.

“Cancer research has evolved rapidly, and we have more health data available than ever before. Our collaboration with SOPHiA GENETICS reflects how our lab is evolving and integrating advanced analytics and AI to better interpret complex molecular information,” Dr. Donna Hansel, division head of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at MD Anderson, said in a press release. “This collaboration will expand our ability to translate high-dimensional data into insights that can meaningfully advance research and precision oncology.”

SOPHiA GENETICS is based in Switzerland and France, and has its U.S. offices in Boston.

“This collaboration with MD Anderson amplifies our shared ambition to push the boundaries of what is possible in cancer research,” Dr. Philippe Menu, chief product officer and chief medical officer at SOPHiA GENETICS, added in the release. “With SOPHiA DDM as a unifying analytical layer, we are enabling new discoveries, accelerating breakthroughs in precision oncology and, most importantly, enabling patients around the globe to benefit from these innovations by bringing leading technologies to all geographies quickly and at scale.”

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