This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Abbas Rana of BCM, Rebecca C. Vaught of Van Heron Labs, and Patrick Scateni of Hypertec. Photos courtesy

Editor's note: Welcome to another Monday edition of Innovators to Know. Today I'm introducing you to three Houstonians to read up about — three individuals behind recent innovation and startup news stories in Houston as reported by InnovationMap. Learn more about them and their recent news below by clicking on each article.

Abbas Rana, associate professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine

The NIH grant goes toward TransplantAI's work developing more precise models for heart and lung transplantation. Photo via BCM

The National Institute of Health has bestowed a Houston medtech company with a $2.2 million Fast-Track to Phase 2 award. InformAI will use the money for the product development and commercialization of its AI-enabled organ transplant informatics platform.

TransplantAI solves that problem, as well as organ scarcity and inefficiency in allocation of the precious resource.

The NIH grant goes toward developing more precise models for heart and lung transplantation (kidney and liver algorithms are further along in development thanks to a previous award from the National Science Foundation), as well as Phase 2 efforts to fully commercialize TransplantAI.

"There is an urgent need for improved and integrated predictive clinical insights in solid organ transplantation, such as for real-time assessment of waitlist mortality and the likelihood of successful post-transplantation outcomes," according to the grant’s lead clinical investigator, Abbas Rana, associate professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. Read more.

Rebecca C. Vaught, founder and CEO of Van Heron Labs

Van Heron Labs, founded at TMC, raised a $1.1 million seed round led by FoodLabs. Photo via LinkedIn

A biotech company that was founded at the Texas Medical Center in Houston has raised fresh funding to support its goal of innovating new technologies for a healthier humanity.

Van Heron Labs, based in Huntsville, Alabama, raised a $1.1 million seed round led by FoodLabs, a European investor and venture studio for food, health, and climate. The startup taps into genomics, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology to improve how cells are cultured and harnessed with the mission to address critical industrial and global challenges with biotechnology.

“Van Heron Labs looks forward to using the generous support and funding from FoodLabs to advance our goal of making biological innovation better, faster, and cheaper," Rebecca C. Vaught, founder and CEO of Van Heron Labs, says in a news release. "By fueling the new bio-economy, we feel that our customers can optimize their systems and bring technologies to overcome critical global challenges to market." Read more.

Patrick Scateni, vice president of global sales of Hypertec

The hardware upgrades more than “double the effective horsepower of DUG’s Houston data center.” Photo via LinkedIn

An Australia-based company has launched a major upgrade of its Houston data center with sustainability in mind.

DUG Technology announced it's increased the company’s high performance computing (HPC) capabilities and also reinforced its commitment to sustainable innovative technology. The company announced its latest investment in 1500 new AMD EPYCTM Genoa servers, which has 192 cores and 1.5 terabytes of DDR5 memory each. Quebec-based IT solution company Hypertec provided the immersion-born hardware.

“DUG’s decision highlights the unmatched technological advancements and superior performance of Hypertec immersion-born products, which are setting a new benchmark in the industry,” Hypertec’s Patrick Scateni, vice president of global sales says in a news release. Read more.

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Rice University MBA programs rank among top 5 in prestigious annual report

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Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business MBA programs have been ranked among the top five in the country again in The Princeton Review’s 2025 Best Business Schools rankings.

The university's MBA program in finance earned a No. 3 ranking, climbing up two spots from its 2024 ranking. Finance MBA programs at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business and New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business were the only ones to outrank Rice, claiming No. 2 and No. 1 spots, respectively.

Rice's online MBA program was ranked No. 5, compared to No. 4 last year. Indiana University's Bloomington Kelley School of Business' online program claimed the top spot.

“These rankings reflect the commitment of our faculty and staff, the drive and talent of our students and the strong support of our alumni and partners,” Peter Rodriguez, dean of Rice Business, said in a news release. “They are exceptional honors but also reminders — not just of our top-tier programs and world-class faculty and students but of our broader impact on the future of business education.”

Rice also ranked at No. 6 for “greatest resources for minority students."

The Princeton Review’s 2025 business school rankings are based on data from surveys of administrators at 244 business schools as well as surveys of 22,800 students enrolled in the schools’ MBA programs during the previous three academic years.

"The schools that made our lists for 2025 share four characteristics that inform our criteria for designating them as 'best': excellent academics, robust experiential learning components, outstanding career services, and positive feedback about them from enrolled students we surveyed," Rob Franek, The Princeton Review's editor-in-chief, said in a press release. "No b-school is best overall or best for all students, but to all students considering earning an MBA, we highly recommend these b-schools and salute them for their impressive programs."

Rice's finance program has ranked in the top 10 for eight consecutive years, and its online MBA has ranked in the top five for four years.

Rice and the University of Houston also claimed top marks on the Princeton Review's entrepreneurship rankings. Rice ranks as No. 1 on the Top 50 Entrepreneurship: Grad list, and the University of Houston ranked No. 1 on Top 50 Entrepreneurship: Ugrad. Read more here.

Houston named ‘star’ metro for artificial intelligence in new report

eyes on AI

A new report declares Houston one of the country’s 28 “star” hubs for artificial intelligence.

The Houston metro area appears at No. 16 in the Brookings Institution’s ranking of metros that are AI “stars.” The metro areas earned star status based on data from three AI buckets: talent, innovation and adoption. Only two places, the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley, made Brookings’ “superstar” list.

According to Brookings, the Houston area had 11,369 job postings in 2024 that sought candidates with AI skills, 210 AI startups (based on Crunchbase data from 2014 to 2024), and 113 venture capital deals for AI startups (based on PitchBook data from 2023 to 2024).

A number of developments are boosting Houston’s AI profile, such as:

Brookings also named Texas’s three other major metros as AI stars:

  • No. 11 Austin
  • No. 13 Dallas-Fort Worth
  • No. 40 San Antonio

Brookings said star metros like Houston “are bridging the gap” between the two superstar regions and the rest of the country. In 2025, the 28 star metros made up 46 percent of the country’s metro-area employment but 54 percent of AI job postings. Across the 28 metros, the number of AI job postings soared 139 percent between 2018 and 2025, according to Brookings.

Around the country, dozens of metros fell into three other categories on Brookings’ AI list: “emerging centers” (14 metros), “focused movers” (29 metros) and “nascent adopters” (79 metros).