Rice Business Plan Competition doles out $2M to 2025 student teams

big winners

The University of Michigan's Intero Biosystems was the star of the show at the 2025 Rice Business Plan Competition, bringing home both the top-place finish and the largest total investment. Photo courtesy Rice University.

Celebrating its 25th year, the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship hosted the celebrated Rice Business Plan Competition this month, doling out more than $2 million in investment and cash prizes to the top-performing teams.

“For 25 years, the Rice Business Plan Competition has helped shape how Rice Business shows up in the world by creating a platform where student-entrepreneurs can tackle some of the most complex challenges of our time in energy, in health care, in technology and beyond,” Peter Rodriguez, dean of Rice Business, the presenting sponsor of the event, said in a news release. “If we’re serious about changing the world — and I believe we are — then it’s our responsibility to open doors for students everywhere to imagine bold solutions and build what comes next.”

Over the course of the three-day event, the 42 startups competing this year from colleges or universities around the world presented their plans before more than 300 angel, venture capital, and corporate investors. The teams were selected from the event’s largest applicant pool to date and represented 34 universities across four countries, according to Rice. Winners were announced at the company showcase and awards ceremony April 12 in downtown Houston.

Seven finalists were selected, though each team left the competition with some form of funding, according to Rice. The University of Michigan's Intero Biosystems was the star of the show, bringing home both the top-place finish and the largest total investment. Rice's own Pattern Materials also had a strong showing, placing fourth in the pitch competition and also earning the fourth-highest investment total.

Here are the teams that won big in 2025. See a full list of winners and prizes here.

Intero Biosystems, University of Michigan - $902,000

The team finished in first place for its GastroScreen, the first stem cell-driven human “mini gut” that is ideal for organ function testing before testing on humans, and also claimed the largest total investments among the competition.

  • $150,000 Goose Capital Investment Grand Prize
  • $250,000 Goose Capital Investment Prize
  • $200,000 The OWL Investment Prize
  • $100,000 Houston Angel Network Investment Prize
  • $100,000 nCourage Investment Network’s Courageous Women Entrepreneur Investment Prize
  • $100,000 Investment Prize from Nancy Chang
  • $1,000 Mercury Elevator Pitch Competition - Overall Winner
  • $1,000 Anbarci Family Company Showcase Prize
  • TMC Innovation Healthcare Accelerator Bootcamp Invitation Prize

MabLab, Harvard University – $301,500

The team placed second for its rapid test capable of detecting multiple adulterants in laced drugs and spiked drinks.

  • $100,000 Investment Prize, sponsored by David Anderson, Anderson Family Fund, Jon Finger and Finger Interests
  • $100,000 The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Texas Angels Investment Prize
  • $25,000 nCourage Investment Network’s Courageous Women Entrepreneur Investment Prize
  • $50,000 Valhalla Investment Network Investment Prize
  • $25,000 The Eagles Investor Investment Prize
  • $500 Mercury Elevator Pitch Competition - Life Science*
  • $1,000 Anbarci Family Company Showcase Prize

re.solution, RWTH Aachen University — $76,500

The team placed third for its water-based technology that recycles polyesters without generating salt waste, making textile recycling viable.

  • $50,000 Investment Prize, sponsored by David Anderson, Anderson Family Fund, Jon Finger and Finger Interests
  • $25,000 Pearland EDC Spirit of Entrepreneurship Cash Prize
  • $500 Mercury Elevator Pitch Competition - Energy/Cleantech
  • $1,000 Anbarci Family Company Showcase Prize

Pattern Materials, Rice University – $134,500

The Houston-based team placed fourth for its laser-induced graphene technology that can be rapidly performed, enabling low-cost, scalable production of the material.

  • $5,000 prize, sponsored by Norton Rose Fulbright
  • $50,000 Valhalla Investment Network Investment Prize
  • $25,000 Pearland EDC Spirit of Entrepreneurship Cash Prize
  • $25,000 New Climate Ventures Sustainable Investment Prize
  • $25,000 Amentum and WRX Companies Rising Stars Space Technology and Commercial Aerospace Cash Prize
  • $500 Mercury Elevator Pitch Competition - Hard Tech
  • $1,000 Anbarci Family Company Showcase Prize
  • $3,000 Venture Builder Innovation Prizes

Xatoms, Western University and University of Toronto — $30,000

The team placed fifth for its AI- and quantum-driven platform for discovering solar-activated semiconductor materials.

  • $5,000 prize, sponsored by EY
  • $25,000 nCourage Investment Network’s Courageous Women Entrepreneur Investment Prize

Mito Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University— $5,000

The team placed sixth for its automated manual cell culture with AI-powered robotic scientists for life science research

  • $5,000 prize, sponsored by Chevron Technology Ventures

FarmSmart.ai, LSU – $106,000

The team placed seventh for its AI—driven assistant that synthesizes vast agricultural research into actionable, tailored intelligence, but earned the fifth-most investments among the group.

  • $5,000 prize, sponsored by Shell Ventures
  • $100,000 The OWL Investment Prize
  • $1,000 Anbarci Family Company Showcase Prize
  • Edward H. Molter Memorial Prizes for Wildcard Round - 1st place - Advance to Finals


Other significant awards

GreenLIB Materials, University of Ottawa – $152,000

  • $150,000 Goose Capital Investment Prize
  • $2,000 Venture Builder Innovation Prizes

Microvitality, Tufts University – $26,500

  • $25,000 Southwest National Pediatric Device Consortium Pediatric Device Cash Prize
  • $1,500 Edward H. Molter Memorial Prizes for Wildcard Round - 3rd place overall in WC

Nanoborne, University of Texas at Austin - $25,000

  • $25,000 NOV Golden Ticket to Supernova Accelerator and Cash Prize

Last year, the Rice Business Plan Competition facilitated over $1.5 million in investment and cash prizes. MesaQuantum from Harvard University landed the highest total investment last year, although it was not named a finalist. Protein Pints from Michigan State University won the pitch competition.

According to Rice, 910 startups have raised more than $6.9 billion in capital through the competition over the last 25 years.

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The winners of the hackathon included a contact tracing tool for schools, a soap dispenser to promote handwashing, a virus-killing filter, and more. Photo via Rice University Public Relations

College students design COVID-19 innovations at Rice University competition

coronavirus creations

As fall creeps closer, the need for a safe way to reopen schools becomes more and more dire. A team of Rice University students created a software that might help on that front.

SchoolTrace, a software that uses the schedules of students and faculty for COVID-19 contact tracing in schools, won top honors in the 2020 Rice Design-A-Thon, which took place July 17 to 19 online this year due to the pandemic. The hackathon was planned to be held in person during the fall semester, but organizers moved up the date to focus on coronavirus solutions. Twenty-three teams — comprised of 116 undergraduate competitors — participated.

"We wanted to provide students with a meaningful summer opportunity and the potential for a significant public health impact," says Carrigan Hudgins, a Sid Richardson College senior and co-coordinator, in a news release. "At one point, we considered cancelling, but hosting it virtually instead actually allowed us to reach a broader base of students across Texas and out of state."

SchoolTrace and its contact tracing tech that doesn't raise privacy concerns with tracking sensors or mobile phone apps took the $1,000 first price. Justin Cheung, Nick Glaze, Mit Mehta, Tyler Montague and Huzaifah Shamim — all juniors majoring in electrical and computer engineering — also received $500 for excelling in the digital age of health care track.

The teams that came in second and third place received $800 and $600, respectively, and the winners of each of the three design tracks also scored $500. The prizes were sponsored by Rice's George R. Brown School of Engineering, Rice's student chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society and the Southwest National Pediatric Device Innovation Consortium.

Aside from the cash prizes, the students also received valuable guidances and feedback from industry experts.

"Having the judges and our team vouch for the actual solution, when we can propose it to different competitions and incubators around Texas and the country, is more important than the cash prizes," says co-coordinator Franklin Briones, a Brown College senior who competed in previous design-a-thons at Rice. Briones and Hudgins co-coordinated this year's event with Wiess College senior Eric Torres.

Here were the other award-winning innovations to come out of the program:

  • Second place and pediatric track winner — "Team SARS Wars: A New Hope." The team created a soap dispenser attachment that plays music and rewards children with stickers if they wash their hands for 20 seconds. Team members included: Anyssa Castorina, Aman Eujayl, Diego Lopez-Bernal, Janet Lu, Rubén Sebastián Marroquín, and Belén Szentes, all sophomores from Rice.
  • Third place — "The (d^3x/dt^3)(s)." COV-COM is a wall-mounted filtration system that catches and kills COVID-19 created by a team of juniors and seniors from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Team members included: Olivia Garza, Juan Herrera, Frida Montoya, Aishwarya Sathish, Samantha Strahan, and Morgan Struthers.
  • Global health track winner — "The Duncaroo Designers." The team from Rice created affordable desk partitions that could be used in schools with limited funds. Team members included: senior Rachel Bui and sophomores Jacob Duplantis, Charlie Gorton, Andrei Mitrofan, Anh Nguyen, and Vivian Wong.

Each of the teams were tasked Friday (July 17) evening with the prompt to "design and present a solution (either a product or a method) to address the treatment, prevention or non-medical related needs of the COVID-19 pandemic." Final presentations took place final presentations Sunday afternoon.

"The needs-finding for those problems was the most cumbersome part," Briones says in the release. "Not because it's hard to find problems, but because COVID-19 is so continually changing. It was hard to find which problem was the most important one."

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Rice scientist earns $600K NSF award to study distractions in digital age

fresh funding

Rice University psychologist Kirsten Adam has received a $600,000 National Science Foundation CAREER Award to research how visual distractions like phone notifications, flashing alerts, crowded screens and busy workspaces can negatively impact focus—and how the brain works to try to regain it.

The highly competitive five-year NSF grants are given to career faculty members with the potential to serve as academic models and leaders in research and education. Adam’s work will aim to clarify how the brain refocuses in the age of screens, instant gratification and other lingering distractions. The funding will also be used to train graduate students in advanced cognitive neuroscience methods, expand access to electroencephalography (EEG) and for public data sharing.

“Kirsten is a valued member of the School of Social Sciences, and we are thrilled that she has been awarded the prestigious NSF CAREER,” Rachel Kimbro, dean of social sciences, said in a news release. “Because distractions continue to increase all around us, her research is timely and imperative to understanding their widespread impacts on the human brain.”

In Adam’s lab, participants complete simplified visual search tasks while their brain activity is recorded using EEG, allowing researchers to measure attention shifts in real time. This process then captures the moment attention is drawn from a goal and how much effort it takes to refocus.

According to Rice, Adam’s work will test long-standing theories about distraction. The research is meant to have real-world implications for jobs and aspects of everyday life where attention to detail is key, including medical imaging, airport security screening and even driving.

“At any given moment, there’s far more information in the world than our brains can process,” Adam added in the release. “Attention is what determines what reaches our awareness and what doesn’t.”

Additionally, the research could inform the design of new technologies that would support focus and decision-making, according to Rice.

“We’re not trying to make attention limitless,” Adam added. “We’re trying to understand how it actually works, so we can stop designing environments and expectations that fight against it.”

12 Houston climatetech startups join Greentown Labs' growing incubator

Startup Talk

More than 40 climatetech startups joined the Greentown Labs Houston community in the second half of 2025, 12 of which hail from the Bayou City.

The companies are among a group of nearly 70 total that joined the climatetech incubator, which is co-located in Houston and Boston, in Q3 and Q4.

The new companies that have joined the Houston incubator specialize in a variety of clean energy applications, from green hydrogen-producing water-splitting cycles to drones that service wind turbines.

The local startups that joined Greentown Houston include:

  • Houston-based Wise Energie, which delivers turnkey microgrids that blend vertical-axis wind, solar PV, and battery storage into a single, silent system.
  • The Woodlands-based Resollant, which is developing compact, zero-emissions hydrogen and carbon reactors to provide low-cost, scalable clean hydrogen and high-purity carbon for the energy and manufacturing sectors.
  • Houston-based ClarityCastle, which designs and manufactures modular, soundproof work pods that replace traditional drywall construction with reusable, low-waste alternatives made from recycled materials.
  • Houston-based WattSto Energy, which manufactures vanadium redox flow batteries to deliver long-duration storage for both grid-scale projects and off-grid microgrids.
  • Houston-based AMPeers, which delivers advanced, high-temperature superconductors in the U.S. at a fraction of traditional costs.
  • Houston-based Biosimo, which is developing bio-based platform chemicals, pioneering sustainable chemistry for a healthier planet and economy.
  • Houston-based Ententia, which offers purpose-built, generative AI for industry.
  • Houston-based GeoKiln Energy Innovation, which is developing a new way to produce clean hydrogen by accelerating natural geologic reactions in iron-rich rock formations using precision electrical heating.
  • Houston-based Timbergrove, which builds AI and IoT solutions that connect and optimize assets—boosting visibility, safety, and efficiency.
  • Houston-based dataVediK, which combines energy-domain expertise with advanced machine learning and intelligent automation to empower organizations to achieve operational excellence and accelerate their sustainability goals.
  • Houston-based Resonant Thermal Systems, which uses a resonant energy-transfer (RET) system to extract critical minerals from industrial and natural brines without using membranes or grid electricity.
  • Houston-based Torres Orbital Mining (TOM),which develops autonomous excavation systems for extreme environments on Earth and the moon, enabling safe, data-driven resource recovery and laying the groundwork for sustainable off-world industry.

Other startups from around the world joined the Houston incubator in the same time period, including:

More than 100 startups joined Greentown this year, according to an end-of-year reflection shared by Greentown CEO Georgina Campbell Flatter.

Flatter joined Greentown in the top leadership role in February 2025. She succeeded former CEO and president Kevin Knobloch, who stepped down in July 2024.

"I moved back to the United States in March 2025 after six years overseas—2,000 miles, three children, and one very patient husband later. Over these months, I’ve had the chance to hear from the entrepreneurs, industry leaders, investors, and partners who make this community thrive. What I’ve experienced has left me brimming with urgent optimism for the future we’re building together," she said in the release.

According to Flatter, Greentown alumni raised more than $2 billion this year and created more than 3,000 jobs.

"Greentown startups and ecosystem leaders—from Boston, Houston, and beyond—are showing that we can move further and faster together. That we don’t have to choose between more energy or lower emissions, or between increasing sustainability and boosting profit. I call this the power of 'and,'" Flatter added. "We’re working for energy and climate, innovation and scale, legacy industry and startups, prosperity for people and planet. The 'and' is where possibility expands."

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCaptialHTX.com.

Intuitive Machines forms partnership with Italian companies for lunar exploration services

to the moon

Houston-based space technology, infrastructure and services company Intuitive Machines has forged a partnership with two Italian companies to offer infrastructure, communication and navigation services for exploration of the moon.

Intuitive Machines’ agreement with the two companies, Leonardo and Telespazio, paves the way for collaboration on satellite services for NASA, a customer of Intuitive Machines, and the European Space Agency, a customer of Leonardo and Telespazio. Leonardo, an aerospace, defense and security company, is the majority owner of Telespazio, a provider of satellite technology and services.

“Resilient, secure, and scalable space infrastructure and space data networks are vital to customers who want to push farther on the lunar surface and beyond to Mars,” Steve Altemus, co-founder and CEO of Intuitive Machine, said in a news release.

Massimo Claudio Comparini, managing director of Leonardo’s space division, added that the partnership with Intuitive Machines is a big step toward enabling human and robotic missions from the U.S., Europe and other places “to access a robust communications network and high-precision navigation services while operating in the lunar environment.”

Intuitive Machines recently expanded its Houston Spaceport facilities to ramp up in-house production of satellites. The company’s first satellite will launch with its upcoming IM‑3 lunar mission.

Intuitive Machines says it ultimately wants to establish a “center of space excellence” at Houston Spaceport to support missions to the moon, Mars and the region between Earth and the moon.

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