This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Michael Torres of CrossBridge Bio, Aileen Allen of Mercury, and Ryan Reisner of SeekerPitch. Photos courtesy

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 three innovators across therapeutics, venture capital, and HR software.

Michael Torres, CEO of CrossBridge Bio

CrossBridge Bio, formed during the TMC Innovation’s Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics program, closed a $10 million seed round led by TMC Venture Fund and CE-Ventures. Photo via crossbridgebio.com

A Houston biotech company based off research out of UTHealth Houston has raised seed funding to continue developing its cancer-fighting therapeutic.

CrossBridge Bio, formed during the TMC Innovation’s Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics program, closed a $10 million seed round led by TMC Venture Fund and Crescent Enterprises' VC arm, CE-Ventures. The round also included participation from Portal Innovations, Alexandria Venture Investments, Linden Lake Labs, and several pre-seed investors.

“We are thrilled to have the support of such experienced investors who share our vision of bringing transformative cancer therapies to patients in need,” Michael Torres, CEO of CrossBridge Bio, says in a news release. Torres served as an entrepreneur in residence of ACT. Continue reading.

Aileen Allen, venture partner at Mercury

Aileen Allen joined Mercury as venture partner and is on the board of the Houston Angel Network. Photo courtesy of Mercury

When Aileen Allen was contemplating a big career move — swapping sides of the table from tech company to venture investor — she was motivated by driving gender and experience diversity amongst decision makers.

"I've worked for VC-backed companies for most of my career and had the opportunity as an executive to be in the boardroom during that time," she says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "One of my takeaways was that very few of my board members looked like me. I had one or two women on any of my boards at a time in totality, and very few of my board members had been operators."

"I'd really like to change that, and I'd like there to be better representation and diversification in the boardroom," she adds. Continue reading.

Ryan Reisner, president and founder of SeekerPitch

Ryan Reisner is the\u00a0president and founder of SeekerPitch and The Reisner Group. Photo via LinkedIn

Confident job seekers have mostly been of the mindset that if they can just get in front of an employer, they can sell themselves into an offer for the open position. The obstacle then, is getting through the screening process to get an actual interview.

Until recently, the price of admission for starting or progressing in a desired career was a resume and cover letter stellar enough to catch the eye of the human resources and recruiting team. Outside of being buried in the immense pile of resumes recruiters do not have the bandwidth to get to, standing out in the sea of candidates can be daunting.

Resumes do not tell the full story as it is and it’s almost impossible for applicants to put their potential, soft skills and work personality into a document to be reviewed. So, what’s the solution?

It is a multi-layered problem, which requires a multi-layered solution, but one of the options gaining steam in the recruitment space is provided by SeekerPitch, a Houston-based HR technology platform utilizing generative AI to make hiring and interviewing more efficient.

“I've noticed that there's a ton of people that slip through the cracks,” says Ryan Reisner, president and founder of SeekerPitch and The Reisner Group. “And we spend all our time interviewing people to see if they have the soft skills. Resumes are hard skills. And now with AI, anybody can build the same exact resume. Everybody can say they have communication skills, leadership skills, and a lot of people say they have those." Continue reading.

CrossBridge Bio, formed during the TMC Innovation’s Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics program, closed a $10 million seed round led by TMC Venture Fund and CE-Ventures. Photo via Getty Images

Houston biotech startup secures $10M seed round to propel cancer-fighting therapy from bench to bedside

fresh funding

A Houston biotech company based off research out of UTHealth Houston has raised seed funding to continue developing its cancer-fighting therapeutic.

CrossBridge Bio, formed during the TMC Innovation’s Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics program, closed a $10 million seed round led by TMC Venture Fund and Crescent Enterprises' VC arm, CE-Ventures. The round also included participation from Portal Innovations, Alexandria Venture Investments, Linden Lake Labs, and several pre-seed investors.

“We are thrilled to have the support of such experienced investors who share our vision of bringing transformative cancer therapies to patients in need,” Michael Torres, CEO of CrossBridge Bio, says in a news release. Torres served as an entrepreneur in residence of ACT.

The company is working on the next-generation of antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) therapeutics that process dual payloads as targeted treatments for a set of challenging cancers. The innovative treatment is based on research from UTHealth experts Dr. Kyoji Tsuchikama and Dr. Zhiqiang An.

“Our dual-payload ADC technology is designed to deliver synergistic therapeutic effects using highly stable linkers that ensure payload release only within the targeted cancer cells, thereby maximizing their therapeutic effectiveness while minimizing the liabilities associated with uptake in unintended tissues, as seen with many of today’s cancer treatments," Torres continues.

He explains that the funding will toward advancing CrossBridge's first development candidate, CBB-120, into preclinical non-GLP toxicology studies in addition to derisking the company’s proprietary linker technology with dual-payload applications, per the release.

As a result of the raise, William McKeon, president and CEO of the Texas Medical Center, and Damir Illich, manager of life sciences of CE-Ventures, will join CrossBridge Bio’s board of directors.

“We are proud to back CrossBridge Bio in their mission to develop the next generation of cancer therapies,” McKeon says in the release. “Their dual-payload ADCs are designed to deliver targeted drug release within cancer cells with greater stability, precision, and control. These breakthrough advancements have the potential to change patients’ lives worldwide and we look forward to helping drive their development.”

The Texas Medical Center's ACT program is making sure the most-promising cancer research makes it to its life-saving commercialization stage. Photo via tmc.edu

Houston program buoys promising cancer research with live-saving innovation

act-ing now

How do you bring promising cancer research to the masses? TMC Innovation's Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics was established with that question in mind.

Funded by a $5 million grant from CPRIT, or the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, in 2019 and in collaboration with the Gulf Coast Consortia and the University of Texas Medical Branch, the first cohort began their intensive work in 2021. The deadline to join the next cohort is October 13.

Since its inception, ACT has seen the forming of 19 companies — two of which have been awarded CPRIT seed grants, along with four in contention for one this year — as well as $92 million in dilutive funding and $10 million in non-dilutive funding.

“We’ve recruited investigators and companies from the breadth and width of the state of Texas, so all the way from Lubbock to Galveston from Dallas to the Rio Grande Valley,” Ahmed AlRawi, program manager, tells InnovationMap. “We've had an amazing set of investigators who have gone through the program — 56 teams to be precise.”

AlRawi says that the first pillar of the program is education. To that end, the cohort works with entrepreneurs in residence like Michael Torres. Best known as the co-founder of ReCode Therapeutics, Torres says that one of his greatest passions lies in translating science into medicines. ReCode is a genetic medicines company that is currently clinical-stage. It’s raised more than $300 million in the last two years, certainly something to which scientist-entrepreneurs earlier in their careers would aspire.

A longtime resident of Dallas, Torres moved his family to Houston last year, calling it “the place to be for cancer startups in Texas.”

Initially, says Torres, Houston wasn’t on his radar. But thanks to a call from ACT external advisor Dan Hargrove, Torres realized that the city might be a fit for him and his goals.

“I wanted to find a project that I could help support, sort of take my experience as a cofounder and help guide the next great startup within the ecosystem,” he says.

Torres and AlRawi agree that the biggest successes to come out of ACT so far include March Biosciences, a company from the first cohort, which is focused on developing CAR-T cell strategies to help combat hematological cancers; CPRIT fundee, OmniNano Pharmaceuticals, which uses patented nanotechnology to co-deliver a pair of therapeutical agents to solid tumors; and the latest, CrossBridge Bio.

Part of the most recent cohort, Torres has joined Drs. Kyoji Tsuchikama and Zhiqiang An as the last company’s CEO. To that end, he’s partnered with the world-class researchers out of UT Health Houston to build a next-generation antibody drug conjugate company that he believes will produce “better and safer and more effective drugs than what's currently on the market today.”

All the more reason that Torres he’s glad to have moved to Houston at what he calls “a really exciting time.” He’s thankful for the Texas Medical Center and the relationships it fosters. “We're all sort of aligning on creating a sustainable biotech ecosystem,” he says. And the next big cancer fighting company may well emerge from ACT.

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Texas cybersecurity co. expands unique train-to-hire model to Houston

job search

It’s increasingly more difficult to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of proprietary data and information in the ever-changing, ever-evolving digital world.

Cyberattacks, including malware, phishing, and ransomware, are becoming increasingly common and sophisticated, posing a consistent threat to a company’s sustainability and bottom line.

To combat that trend, Nukudo, a San Antonio-based cybersecurity workforce development company, is expanding its initiative to bridge the global cybersecurity talent gap through immersive training and job placement to Houston.

“We saw that there was a need in the market because there's a shortage of skilled manpower within the cybersecurity industry and other digital domains,” says Dean Gefen, CEO of NukuDo. “So, our initial goal was to take a large pool of people and then make them to be fully operational in cybersecurity in the shortest amount of time.”

The company refers to the plan as the “training-to-employment model,” which focuses on providing structured training to select individuals who then acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to secure and maintain fruitful careers.

The company identifies potential associates through its proprietary aptitude test, which recognizes individuals who possess the innate technical acumen and potential for success in various cybersecurity roles, regardless of their level of education.

“We take in people from all walks of life, meaning the program is purely based on the associate’s potential,” Gefen says. “We have people who were previously aircraft engineers, teachers, graphic designers, lawyers, insurance agents and so forth.”

Once selected, associates are trained by cybersecurity experts while gaining hands-on experience through scenario-based learning, enabling them to be deployed immediately as fully operational cybersecurity professionals.

The program training lasts just six months—all paid—followed by three years of guaranteed employment with NukuDo.

While in training, associates are paid $ 4,000 per month; then, they’re compensated by nearly double that amount over the next three years, ultimately pushing their salaries to well into the six figures after completing the entire commitment.

In addition to fostering a diverse talent pipeline in the cybersecurity field, NukuDo is creating a comprehensive solution to address the growing shortage of technical talent in the global workforce.

And arming people with new marketable skills has a litany of benefits, both professional and personal, Gefen says.

“Sometimes, we have associates who go on to make five times their previous salary,” says Gefen. “Add to that fact that we had someone that had a very difficult life beforehand and we were able to put him on a different path. That really hits home for us that we are making a difference.

Nulkudo currently has partnerships with companies such as Accenture Singapore and Singapore Airlines. Gefen says he and his team plans to have a new class of associates begin training every month by next year and take the model to the Texas Triangle (Houston, Austin and Dallas)—then possibly nationwide.

“The great thing about our program is that we train people above the level of possible threat of replacement by artificial intelligence,” Gefen says. “But what we are also doing, and this is due to requirements that we have received from clients that are already hiring our cyber professionals, is that we are now starting to deliver AI engineers and data scientists in other domains.”

“That means that we have added more programs to our cybersecurity program. So, we're also training people in data science and machine learning,” he continues.

All interested candidates for the program should be aware that a college degree is not required. NukuDo is genuinely interested in talented individuals, regardless of their background.

“The minimum that we are asking for is high school graduates,” Gefen says. “They don't need to have a college degree; they just need to have aptitude. And, of course, they need to be hungry to make this change.”

2 Houston universities declared among world’s best in 2026 rankings

Declaring the Best

Two Houston universities are in a class of their own, earning top spots on a new global ranking of the world's best universities.

Rice University and University of Houston are among the top 1,200 schools included in the QS World University Rankings 2026. Ten more schools across Texas make the list.

QS (Quacquarelli Symonds), a London-based provider of higher education data and analytics, compiles the prestigious list each year; the 2026 edition includes more than 1,500 universities from around the world. Factors used to rank the schools include academic reputation; employer reputation; faculty-student ratio; faculty research; and international research, students, and faculty.

In Texas, University of Texas at Austin lands at No. 1 in the state, No. 20 in the U.S., and No. 68 globally.

Houston's Rice University is close behind as Texas' No. 2 school. It ranks 29th in the U.S. and No. 119 in the world. Unlike UT, which fell two spots globally this year (from No. 66 to 68), Rice climbed up the charts, moving from 141st last year to No. 119.

University of Houston impresses as Texas' 4th highest-ranked school. It lands at No. 80 in the U.S. and No. 556 globally, also climbing about 100 spots up the chart.

Rice and UH are on a roll in regional, national, and international rankings this year.

Rice earned top-15 national rankings by both Niche.com and Forbes last fall. Rice claimed No. 1 and UH ranked No. 8 in Texas in U.S. News & World Report's 2025 rankings. Rice also topped WalletHub's 2025 list of the best colleges and universities in Texas for 2025.

More recently, in April, both UH and Rice made U.S. News' 2025 list of top grad schools.

In all, 192 U.S. universities made the 2026 QS World University Rankings — the most of any country. Topping the global list is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

“The results show that while U.S. higher education remains the global leader, its dominance is increasingly challenged by fast-rising emerging systems,” says the QS World University Rankings report. “A decade ago, 32 American universities [were] featured in the world’s top 100; today, that number has dropped to 26, and only 11 of these institutions have improved their position this year."

The 12 Texas universities that appear in the QS World University Rankings 2026 list are:

  • University of Texas at Austin, No. 20 in the U.S. and No. 68 in the world (down from No. 66 last year).
  • Rice University, No. 29 in the U.S. and No. 119 in the world (up from No. 141 last year).
  • Texas A&M University, No. 32 in the U.S. and No. 144 in the world (up from No. 154 last year).
  • University of Houston, No. 80 in the U.S. and No. 556 in the world (up from 651-660 last year).
  • University of Texas at Dallas, No. 85 in the U.S. and No. 597 in the world (down from 596 last year).
  • Texas Tech University, No. 104 in the U.S. and No. 731-740 in the world (unchanged from last year).
  • University of North Texas, No. 123 in the U.S. and No. 901-950 in the world (up from 1,001-1,200 last year)
  • Baylor University, tied for No. 136 in the U.S. and at No. 1,001-1,200 in the world (unchanged from last year).
  • Southern Methodist University, tied for No. 136 in the U.S. and at 1,001-1,200 in the world (unchanged from last year).
  • University of Texas Arlington, tied for No. 136 in the U.S. and at 1,001-1,200 in the world (unchanged from last year).
  • University of Texas at San Antonio, tied for No. 136 in the U.S. and at 1,001-1,200 in the world (unchanged from last year).
  • University of Texas at El Paso, No. 172 in the U.S. and at 1,201-1,400 in the world (down from 1,001-1,200 last year).
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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Houston students develop new device to prepare astronauts for outer space

space race

Rice University students from the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing designed a space exercise harness that is comfortable, responsive, and adaptable and has the potential to assist with complex and demanding spacewalks.

A group of students—Emily Yao, Nikhil Ashri, Jose Noriega, Ben Bridges and graduate student Jack Kalicak—mentored by assistant professor of mechanical engineering Vanessa Sanchez, modernized harnesses that astronauts use to perform rigorous exercises. The harnesses are particularly important in preparing astronauts for a reduced-gravity space environment, where human muscles and bones atrophy faster than they do on Earth. However, traditional versions of the harnesses had many limitations that included chafing and bruising.

The new harnesses include sensors for astronauts to customize their workouts by using real-time data and feedback. An additional two sensors measure astronauts’ comfort and exercise performance based on temperature and humidity changes during exercise and load distribution at common pressure points.

“Our student-led team addressed this issue by adding pneumatic padding that offers a customized fit, distributes pressure over a large surface area to reduce discomfort or injuries and also seamlessly adapts to load shifts — all of which together improved astronauts’ performance,” Sanchez said in a news release. “It was very fulfilling to watch these young engineers work together to find innovative and tangible solutions to real-world problems … This innovative adjustable exercise harness transforms how astronauts exercise in space and will significantly improve their health and safety during spaceflights.”

The project was developed in response to a challenge posted by the HumanWorks Lab and Life Science Labs at NASA and NASA Johnson Space Center for the 2025 Technology Collaboration Center’s (TCC) Wearables Workshop and University Challenge, where teams worked to solve problems for industry leaders.

Rice’s adaptive harness won the Best Challenge Response Award. It was funded by the National Science Foundation and Rice’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry.

“This challenge gave us the freedom to innovate and explore possibilities beyond the current harness technology,” Yao added in the release. “I’m especially proud of how our team worked together to build a working prototype that not only has real-world impact but also provides a foundation that NASA and space companies can build and iterate upon.”