3 Houston innovators to know this week

Who's Who

From oil and gas deals to finance-focused initiatives, this week's innovators are ones to watch. Courtesy photos

As Houstonians head back to work or school following a fun summer break, we know two things for sure.

The first is that traffic will get back to its headache inducing craziness and that Houston startup news will only get more frequent. This week's innovators to know include oil and gas entrepreneurs with big deals on the line plus a finance-savvy woman who wants to encourage others to take control of their personal finance.

Tara Karimi, co-founder and chief scientist at Cemvita Factory

Courtesy of Cemvita Factory

A brother-sister team has taken a huge step forward with their biotech startup, Cemvita Factory. Moji Karimi, who has a background in the oil and gas industry, and his sister, Tara, who has a background in biotech, teamed up a few years ago to create a technology that can mimic photosynthesis, turning carbon dioxide into glucose. It was Tara who figured out the technique and then the two worked backward to identify the industries — oil and gas and space — to work within.

Now, Cemvita is celebrating an investment from an Occidental Petroleum subsidiary — Oxy Low Carbon Ventures LLC.

"We have an ambitious goal to take one gigaton of CO2 out of the carbon cycle in the next decade and are very excited about being a part of Occidental's journey to become a carbon-neutral company," says Tara, co-founder and chief scientist, in a release.

Read more about Cemvita Factory here.

Travis Parigi, founder and CEO of LiquidFrameworks

Courtesy of LiquidFrameworks

Travis Parigi has built his software company from the ground up. Now, for the first time, he's thinking strategically about growth, thanks to a new financial partner.

Parigi's company, LiquidFrameworks, is an enterprise software company with applications in the upstream and downstream services industry. While the software focuses on automation and AI applications, Parigi tells InnovationMap that he has his eyes on emerging technology all the time. I keep a keen watch on a lot of the different technologies that are emerging out there.

"Blockchain is certainly one of them that we're looking at," Parigi says. "I think there's some interesting things that we might be able to do with that as it relates to price book management, which is complex and varied. It could be that blockchain could end up providing a nice mechanism for both parties to independently have pricing data verified."

Eryn Schultz, co-founder of pHERsonal Finance Day

Courtesy of pHERsonal Finance Day.

Eryn Schultz wanted to encourage women to take control of their finances. So she created her own holiday for it called pHERsonal Finance Day. She hosted Houston panels and talks on the day — Friday, August 23 — and motivated women everywhere to take a moment and make a smart financial plan.

"In a world of women's marches and the 'Future is Female' t-shirts, women should be stepping up to shape their financial futures," Schultz writes in a guest column for InnovationMap. "For that reason, women should take a financial health day."

Schultz had a great turnout and reception for the Houston event, and she's already planning for next year.

August 23 is pHERsonal Finance Day — a day dedicated to education about financial practices for women. Getty Images

Why women should take a personal finance day from this Houston founder

Guest column

You've seen the statistics on Americans' financial health. The average American is not in great shape: $6,000 per person in credit card debt, $4,900 per person in student loan debt, and 51 percent of all workers who feel they aren't saving enough for retirement.

You also probably know about two other trends: women are living longer than men and divorcing at higher rates. What you may not know is that in 2019, most married women still say their husbands manage their finances. Even more surprisingly, millennial women have their husbands manage their financial futures at higher rates than their mothers. According to a 2017 UBS survey, 61 percent of millennial married women say their husbands manage their finances versus 54 percent of boomers. How do these trends come together?

Each year, there are two million American women who get divorced or widowed. These women grapple with a traumatic life event while trying to figure out the passwords to their investment accounts. In addition, married women are waking up to discover their retirement savings are short of their expectations. In a world of women's marches and the "Future is Female" t-shirts, women should be stepping up to shape their financial futures. For that reason, women should take a financial health day.

What's a financial health day? It's 24-hours where you take the day off work or dedicate a Sunday to writing down the balances of your investment accounts, renegotiating your auto insurance, and deciding if you should roll over that old 401K. A financial health day is not going to magically wipe away your student loans or solve your spending problem, but it can give you a plan for paying off debt or your mortgage three years early.

There is growing consensus on what being financially healthy means: you should maintain a four to six-month emergency fund, carry zero credit card debt, and contribute 10 to 20 percent of your monthly income to a retirement fund. Additional goals, like buying a house or paying for your kids' college, don't come until you have achieved a stable foundation.

Along with knowing what "financial health" means, there is also general agreement among financial experts on the best ways to achieve it:

Know your money situation. Physically write out your loans (credit cards, auto loans) with their interest rates, and all of your savings (including retirement). Seeing it all in one place will help you figure out your priorities.
Create money goals. Set multiple goals and prioritize them (you can also fund more than one goal at once). Is it saving for the down payment on a house or becoming debt free?
Track your spending. Where is your money going? There are budgeting apps from Mint or YNAB to help you keep track. Are there places where you can tweak your spending habits to fund your savings goal? Can you cancel a recurring expense you aren't using? Could you negotiate a better rate on your phone bill?
Automate to achieve your goals. Set up recurring payments to your debt and savings. Automated monthly transfers from your checking account to your savings goals make sure you aren't as tempted to spend that money. Schedule monthly and yearly calendar alerts to check your spending, rebalance your portfolio, etc. One advanced tip is to enroll in your 401K plan's "save more later" option. This will increase the percentage of your paycheck you put into your 401K annually.

These items seem simple. Yet, why are so few people doing them? It takes a LOT of work to get this money infrastructure set up. At the end of a long day of client meetings, chasing a toddler, or some combo of the two, it's difficult to muster the mental energy to address your finances – especially if you have the option of outsourcing this responsibility to a capable partner. That's where a day dedicated to your financial to-dos will help. You don't need to be solely in charge of your money, but you definitely need to understand the plan.

While we feel that everyone can benefit from a financial health day, the first pHERsonal Finance Day targeted to millennial women is scheduled for August 23. Check out our schedule if you want to get started. If taking a whole day off feels like a long-shot, take this quiz here to help you prioritize your financial to-dos. Whether it's a daily money minute or an appointment with a financial adviser (pick one who is a fiduciary), what are you doing to own your financial future?

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Eryn Schultz is the co-founder of pHERsonal Finance Day.

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Houston Methodist awarded $4M grant to recruit head of Neal Cancer Center

new hire

Armed with a $4 million state grant, the Houston Methodist Academic Institute has recruited a renowned expert in ovarian and endometrial cancer research to lead the Dr. Mary and Ron Neal Cancer Center.

The grant, provided by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, enabled the institute to lure Dr. Daniela Matei away from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. There, she is the Diana Princess of Wales Professor in Cancer Research and chief of the Division of Reproductive Science in Medicine.

Matei will succeed Dr. Jenny Chang, who was hired last year to run the Houston Methodist Academic Institute.

At the Neal Cancer Center, located in the Texas Medical Center complex, oncologists work on innovations in cancer research, treatment, and technology. The center opened in 2021 after the Neals donated $25 million to expand Houston Methodist’s cancer research capabilities. It handles about 7,000 new cases each year involving more than two dozen types of cancer.

U.S. News & World Report puts Houston Methodist Hospital at No. 19 among the country’s best hospitals for cancer care, two spots below Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston sits at No. 1 on the list.

Matei’s research related to ovarian and endometrial cancer holds the potential to benefit tens of thousands of American women. The American Cancer Society estimates:

21,010 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and 12,450 women will die from it.
68,270 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with endometrial cancer, and 14,450 women will die from it.

Matei is leaving Northwestern in the wake of widespread cuts in federal funding for medical research. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has canceled or frozen tens of millions of dollars in grants for Northwestern, the Wall Street Journal reports, and the university has been plugging the gaps with its own money.

“The university is totally keeping us on life support,” Matei told the newspaper last year. “The big question is for how long they can do this.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, Matei’s $5 million NIH grant supporting 69 cancer trials has been caught up in the federal funding chaos, so Northwestern stepped in to cover trial expenses such as nurses’ salaries and diagnostic procedures.

Trial participants include some patients with rare, incurable tumors who are undergoing experimental treatments aligned with the genetics of their condition, the newspaper says.

“It’s certainly a life-and-death situation for cancer patients on these trials,” Matei said in 2025.

Matei is among the beneficiaries of more than $15 million in grants approved February 18 by CPRIT’s board. The grants went toward recruiting five cancer researchers to institutions in Texas.

One of those grants, totaling $1.5 million, went to the University of Houston to recruit Akash Gupta, a research scientist at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. The remaining grants went to recruit scientists to The University of Texas at Dallas and The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Rice University lands $14M state grant to open Center for Space Technologies

on a mission

Rice University’s Space Institute soon will be home to the newly created Center for Space Technologies.

On Feb. 17, the Texas Space Commission approved a nearly $14.2 million grant for the Rice project. The Center for Space Technologies will target:

Research and development
Technology transfer and innovation
Statewide partnerships
Workforce development training
Space-focused education programs

The goal of the new center “is to fulfill an articulated need for research, workforce development, and industry collaboration,” said Kemah communications and marketing executive Gwen Griffin, chair of the commission.

State Rep. Greg Bonnen, a Friendswood Republican, authored the bill that set up the Texas Space Commission.

Since being authorized in 2023, the commission has funded 24 projects, with Rice and Houston-area companies accounting for nearly $75 million in grants to back space-related initiatives.

The grant to Rice brings the TSC's total investment to $150 million, fully committing the entire state appropriation from the Texas Legislature in 2023.

Other local companies that have received grants over the years include Aegis Aerospace, Axiom Space, Intuitive Machines, Starlab Space and Venus Aerospace.

The commission also awarded $7 million to Blue Origin earlier this month. See a list of the 24 awards here.

Waymo self-driving robotaxis have officially launched in Houston

Waymo has arrived

Waymo will begin dispatching its robotaxis in four more cities in Texas and Florida, expanding the territory covered by its fleet of self-driving cars to 10 major U.S. metropolitan markets.

The move into Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando, Florida, announced Tuesday, February 24, widens Waymo's early lead in autonomous driving while rival services from Tesla and the Amazon-owned Zoox are still testing their vehicles in only a few U.S. cities.

In contrast, Waymo's robotaxis already provide more than 400,000 weekly trips in the six metropolitan areas where they have been transporting passengers: Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, and Austin, Texas.

Waymo operates its ride-hailing service through its own app in all the U.S. cities except Atlanta and Austin, where its robotaxis can only be summoned through Uber's ride-hailing service.

The expansion into four more markets marks a significant step toward Waymo's goal to surpass 1 million weekly paid trips by the end of 2026. Without identifying where its robotaxis will be available next, Waymo is targeting a list of eight other cities that include Las Vegas, Washington, Detroit and Boston while signaling its first overseas availability is likely to be London.

To help pay for more robotaxis, Waymo recently raised $16 billion as part of the financial infusion that puts the value of the company at $126 billion. The valuation fueled speculation that Waymo may eventually be spun off from its corporate parent Alphabet, where it began as a secret project within Google in 2009.

Although Waymo is opening up in four more cities, its robotaxis initially will only be made available to a limited number of people with its ride-hailing app in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando before the service will be available to all comers in those markets.

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