Houston medtech accelerator announces inaugural cohort

future of health care

Five companies have been selected for a brand new accelerator program in Houston. Image via Getty Images

A Houston medical technology organization has announced the inaugural cohort of a new early-stage accelerator.

M1 MedTech, launched this year by Houston-based Proxima Clinical Research, announced its Fall 2022 cohort.

“This initial cohort launches M1 MedTech with an interactive 14-week agenda covering the basics every emerging MedTech business needs to progress from a startup to an established solution in their market,” says Sean Bittner, director of programs at M1 MedTech, in a news release.

The accelerator will equip early-stage startups with storytelling, business plan support, investor connections, FDA guidance, research, and more through one-on-one consultations, workships, and in-kind services.

The first cohort includes five startups, per the release from the company:

  1. Linovasc. Providing a long overdue major update to balloon angioplasty devices in over 50 years, the Linovasc solution offers a safer branch occlusion and aortic stent dilatation using a toroidal balloon that expands the aorta uniformly without the ischemia caused by current treatments. The company is founded by Bruce Addis.
  2. Grapheton. Founded by Sam Kassegne and Bao Nguyen, Grapheton's patented carbon materials work with electrically active devices to improve the longevity and outcome of bioelectric implants in the body. Terry Lingren serves as the CEO of the startup.
    • Rhythio Medical. Founded by Kunal Shah and Savannah Esteve, Rhythio is the first preventative approach to heart arrhythmias.The chief medical officer is Dr. Mehdi Razavi.
      • PONS Technology. An AI cognitive functioning ultrasound device attempting to change the way ultrasound is done, PONS is founded by CEO: Soner Haci and CTO: Ilker Hacihaliloglu.
        • Vivifi Medical. Founded by CEO Tushar Sharma, Vivifi is the first suture-less laparoscopic technology that connects vessels to improve male infertility and benign prostatic hyperplasia. The company's senior R&D engineer is Frida Montoya.

          The program includes support from sponsors and experts from: Proxima Clinical Research, Greenlight Guru, Medrio, Galen Data, Merge Medical Device Studio, Venn Negotiation, Engagement PR & Marketing, Aleberry Creative, and others.

          “This is an amazing opportunity for emerging founders to learn the progression of pipelining their ideas through the FDA and absorb the critical strategies for success early in their business development,” says Isabella Schmitt, principal at M1 MedTech and director of regulatory affairs at Proxima CRO, in the release.

          These three startups walked away from a pitch competition with thousands of dollars in equity-free prizes. Photo courtesy of Rice University

          3 alumni-founded startups claim cash prizes at Rice University pitch competition

          winner, winner

          Three startups founded by Rice University graduates have won investment prizes at an annual pitch competition.

          The annual H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge, or NRLC, welcomed a panel of judges to hear from six alumni-founded startups in the finals last week. The prizes on the line totaled $65,000 in equity-free funding. The event, which is separate from the student version of the competition, is hosted by Rice’s Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

          The big winner of the 2022 competition was Rhythio Medical, a preventative heart arrhythmias treatment startup. The company won first place, which included $30,000 in equity-free funding, as well as the Audience Choice Award that came with $1,500.

          Taking second place, Synopic, which facilitates faster and more accurate surgical procedures through improved endoscopic vision technology, won $20,000 in equity-free funding. Lastly, Green Room, a platform that streamlines taxes and payments for touring artists, clinched third place and $15,000.

          The event, named for Rice professor emeritus and entrepreneurship program founder H. Albert Napier, was sponsored by Mercury Fund, T-Minus Solutions and Chevron Technology Ventures. This year's finalists were selected by judges made up of Rice alumni. Three judges — Danielle Conkling, director at Silicon Valley Bank, Paul Manwell, senior director at Google, and Joanna Nathan, manager of new ventures at Johnson & Johnson — listened to and evaluated each company's five-minute pitch and followed up with questions.

          Rhythio Medical was founded by CEO Kunal Shah, class of 2022, and Savannah Esteve, who also serves as head of product. The technology includes a surgically injected wire that makes an irregular heart work like a healthy one. It works alongside a traditional implantable cardioverter defibrillator, however, the wire but works to prevent arrhythmias, while ICDs treat arrhythmias with a painful shock to the patient’s heart. The company lists the Texas Heart Institute and the University of Texas at Austin as its research partners.

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          Houston e-commerce giant Cart.com launches government-focused subsidiary

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          Houston e-commerce and logistics unicorn Cart.com has launched a new subsidiary.

          Cart Government Solutions (CGS), which was announced earlier this week, will provide supply chain and logistics services and software for the federal and state government sectors. The new subsidiary will be headquartered in Washington, D.C., and operate out of about 6 million square feet of secure warehouse space across 14 U.S. facilities, according to a news release from Cart.com. It will support both domestic and overseas logistics.

          Industry veteran Gregg Zegras will lead the new entity as president. Zegras previously served as Cart.com's chief revenue officer, according to LinkedIn. Before that, he served as president of Connecticut-based Pitney Bowes Global eCommerce, a digital shipping solutions company.

          Remington Tonar, Cart.com's co-founder, will serve as CGS's chief innovation officer.

          “Government agencies face procurement and logistics challenges that many commercial platforms simply weren’t built to solve,” Zegras said in the news release. “Cart Government Solutions exists to change that. We’re combining the speed and innovation of a technology company with the compliance rigor, security, and operational depth that federal and state customers require, and we’re doing it with a team that has spent careers working alongside and inside these agencies.”

          According to the company, CGS will focus on meeting compliance and security requirements in the public sector. Some of the services the new entity will offer include:

          • Inventory management
          • Cold-chain and specialty storage for pharmaceuticals, medical devices and regulated goods
          • Enterprise-grade supply chain software
          • Government-compliant webstores and online ordering portals
          • Cybersecurity operations

          Cart.com has been serving the public sector since 2022, when the company began distributing COVID-19 health supplies nationwide, according to the news release. Through that pandemic-era contract, the company reports it moved more than 725 million units, with an average of under two days per shipment.

          Cart.com was founded in Houston in 2020, though it briefly moved its headquarters to Austin. The company reached unicorn status with its $60 million Series C raise in 2023. It most recently raised $180 million in growth capital from private equity firm Springcoast Partners in March, which put the startup over the $1 billion in fundraising mark in just six years.

          At the time, Cart.com said it planned to scale its logistics network, expand AI capabilities and develop workflow automation tools.

          Houston-based KBR Inc. also recently launched a government services spinoff. Read more here.

          2 Houston universities named best colleges of 2027 by Princeton Review

          A-Plus Ratings

          Back-to-school season is has returned in full force, and that means it's time for college rankings. Two Houston universities in particular are being hailed as the top of the class for 2027.

          The high caliber schools — Rice University and University of Houston — earned new acclaim in The Princeton Review's ranking of the "Best 392 Colleges" for 2027.

          The Princeton Review's 35th annual "Best Colleges" rankings are determined by a survey of 172,000 current college students that gave "candid feedback" about their schools and their experiences. The flagship guide does not rank the schools overall, but it does rank them across 50 different categories, including best-run colleges, best quality of life, happiest students, best athletic facilities, among others.

          In all, 14 Texas institutions were highlighted in the overall list of the 392 best colleges.

          Schools don't pay to be included in the guide, but The Princeton Review clarified that schools could pay for a "featured" designation. No Houston university paid to be featured in this year's guide. Trinity University in San Antonio and Southwestern University, a private school in the Austin suburb Georgetown, were the only two Texas schools that paid to be "featured."

          Rice and UH have been on a winning streak in separate reports of the best universities worldwide, best graduate schools, and best online degree programs.

          In addition to being included in the overall list, Rice was highlighted as one of the Best Value Colleges, Colleges That Create Futures, and it earned high marks in Princeton Review's Mental Health Honor Roll 2026. The home of the Rice Owls also starred in the regional Best Southwest list that contained 41 universities across Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.

          "Rice University stands out as a leading research university where academic diversity and a wide array of interdisciplinary institutes and centers make it easy for students to explore multiple areas of interest," the school's profile says. "At Rice, 'knowledge isn’t siloed — students are constantly crossing disciplines and interests in ways that feel natural rather than exceptional.'"

          Rice earned the following rankings on 14 other lists:

          • No. 1 – Lots of Race/Class Interaction
          • No. 3 – Best College Newspaper
          • No. 9 – Friendliest Students
          • No. 11 – Best Quality of Life
          • No. 13 – Great Financial Aid
          • No. 14 – Top 50 Best Value Private Colleges
          • No. 17 – Their Students Love These Colleges
          • No. 18 – Top 20 Best Value Private Colleges Without Aid
          • No. 18 – Best Student Support and Counseling Services
          • No. 19 – Best College Dorms
          • No. 21 – Students Study the Most
          • No. 24 – Best Campus Food
          • No. 24 – Best College Radio Station
          • No. 24 – Best-Run colleges
          The University of Houston also appeared in the Best Southwest, Best Value Colleges, and Colleges That Create Futures lists, and it was named a top Green College, which examined schools that "share superb sustainability practices, a strong foundation in sustainability education, and a healthy quality of life for students on campus

          UH earned five more accolades:

          • No. 1 – Top 50 Undergraduate Schools for Entrepreneurship Studies
          • No. 1 – Top Undergraduate Schools for Entrepreneurship Studies in the Southwest
          • No. 8 – Most Politically Moderate Students
          • No. 15 – Financial Aid Not So Great
          • No. 42 – Top 50 Best Value Public Colleges
          In the school's profile, students say they had an overall positive experience thanks to UH's excellent academic offerings and dedicated faculty members.

          "Students confirm that 'the research and other academic opportunities... are very accessible to students who seek it out,'" the profile says. "This includes taking advantage of UH’s vast alumni network (more than 325,000 and counting), not to mention its location in the corporate center of Houston, where 'the opportunities that are provided are immense.'"

          The 12 other public and private universities in Texas included in The Princeton Review's 2027 guide are:

          • The University of Texas at Austin
          • Southwestern University, Georgetown
          • Baylor University, Waco
          • Texas A&M University - College Station
          • Trinity University, San Antonio
          • Texas State University, San Marcos
          • Angelo State University, San Angelo
          • Texas Christian University, Fort Worth
          • University of Dallas, Irving
          • Southern Methodist University, Dallas
          • The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson
          • Austin College, Sherman
          ---

          A version of this story originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

          Houston named the No.1 emerging city for biopharma in inaugural report

          Biopharma Leader

          Houston is ranked No.1 on the first-ever Next 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters report published by Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN).

          The report, which ranks the best emerging hubs for life science activities, considered patents, NIH funding, lab space, venture capital investments, and the number of jobs in regions in cities, states and “clusters” across the U.S. GEN touts Houston as the top city for the biopharma industry due to a surge in funding, job creation, medical innovations and startup success.

          Here’s how Houston ranked in the report’s different categories;

          • No. 1 for NIH funding with 2,262 awards totaling more than $1.25 billion
          • No. 2 for emerging regions for jobs, with 28,000 jobs
          • No. 2 for lab space, with roughly 8 million square feet in the market
          • No. 6 for patents, with 2,760 patent families

          According to BioHouston chairman Jeff Wade, Houston secured half a billion dollars in venture capital funding in 2025 and 2026 to date.

          The report called out major biopharm news out of Houston in the last few months, including Bristol Myers Squibb selecting Houston for its $1 billion, 600,000-square-foot manufacturing site and Eli Lily selecting Houston for its $6.5 billion, 236-acre manufacturing site. Both facilities will be located within Generation Park, a 4,300-acre, master-planned commercial district near Lake Houston.

          Houston startups like CrossBridge Bio and Duracyte were also mentioned in the report. CrossBridge, which develops antibody-drug conjugates for cancer, was acquired by Eli Lily in April for $300 million. Duracyte, a “living pharmacy” company, was launched out of Rice University’s biotech venture studio RBL LLC this spring and is backed by up to a $45 million Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) award.

          The startup is working to commercialize its Hybrid Advanced Molecular Manufacturing Regulator (HAMMR) technology, a rechargeable, implantable device that can sense biological signals, monitor tumor environments and adjust therapeutic output in real time.

          “There’s a lot of great talent, but the unique advantage that we have is we are able to benefit from a lot of unique clinical infrastructure and clinician insights,” Omid Veiseh, Duracyte co-founder and managing partner of RBL LLC, told GEN. “There are a lot of clinicians here who are eager to partner on investigator-initiated trials.”

          The report also touted Houston’s Texas Medical Center, home to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine, and international partnerships like the recently expanded TMC Korea BioBridge.

          Other cities to make the list include:

          • No. 2 Minneapolis-St. Paul
          • No. 3 Denver-Boulder
          • No. 4 St. Louis
          • No. 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

          States to make the list include:

          • No. 1 Ohio (including Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus)
          • No. 2 Indiana (including Indianapolis)
          • No. 3 Florida (including Jacksonville and Miami-Fort Lauderdale)
          • No. 4 Georgia (including Atlanta and Augusta)
          • No. 5 Wisconsin (including Madison and Kenosha)

          Regional state clusters to watch include:

          • Phoenix
          • Pittsburgh
          • Greater Richmond, Virginia
          • South Carolina
          • Utah

          See the full report here.

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