Houston area high school students develop innovations to help in coronavirus crisis response

COVID heroes

Teens at a local school took initiative to create entrepreneurial solutions amid the COVID-19 crisis. Photo courtesy of The Village School

Some Houston-area high school students have stepped up to help their community during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The students have worked on two separate teams to create an intubation box to reduce the spread of COVID-19 from patients to healthcare workers and SpeeDelivery, an app that delivers food for at-risk individuals.

The students from The Village School in the Energy Corridor, known for its unique and enriching IB diploma, are getting support from school educators. The two projects grew naturally from the interests of the high school juniors, who wanted to do anything that could help others during this crisis.

"Our teachers have been very supportive have really enjoyed having the opportunity to see the students," says TeKedra Pierre, director of experiential learning at The Village School. "It's hard enough to teach virtually but with platforms like Zoom, Google classroom, and other platforms that they have been using to communicate and make sure that our students are still doing well."

The students created the intubation box out of clear plastic with two areas of access so that doctors can put their hands through it and intubate a patient who needs a ventilator. The box prevents exposure to the virus which can be passed in microdroplets from patients to healthcare workers.

"It's extremely easy to build and effective, most importantly affordable so anyone could use it," says Varun Agarwal, one of the students who created the intubation box. "Our catalyst was reading about the shortage of N-95 masks, so we made the box essentially open-source design in our website so that anyone can take the design and send it to a hospital."

Agarwal's website is a youth engagement initiative that he started with his older brother and some friends, called Do Your Bit. The intubation box is only one of many projects. The box has already been used by doctors in the Princeton Hospital System with significant positive results due to their reusable nature.

The SpeeDelivery students were also inspired to lend a helping hand due to the hardship senior citizens were experiencing not being able to go grocery shopping for their own safety. The app allows students to safely do grocery runs for older citizens in Houston, Katy, and Sugarland.

"We came up with the idea of SpeeDelivery because we wanted to help the community who could not afford to go out," said Omar Abouelazm, web developer for the project. "Village students have this tradition to help as much as possible."

The students have currently done 15 deliveries, using appropriate personal protective equipment. They are working to ramp up their delivery system to expand the number of deliveries.

"It's helped us have that commonality and a closer connection to our fellow students because we all want to help others during this difficult time," says Mukhil Ramesh, finance director for SpeeDelivery.

Pierre and the students say that The Village School's culture has nurtured and supported their projects to help the community.

"It's part of the culture at Village, our students come from all over the world," says Pierre. "I think their ability to identify problems or identify solutions is unparalleled. It's ingrained into our school culture to be innovative, creative, and think differently."

It's crucial for Houston to prepare the next generation's workforce to succeed and fill jobs with capable talent. Educational First Steps/Facebook

Preparing Houston's tech workforce starts in school, says expert

Guest column

Recent studies have shown that nearly half of students enter college with an undecided major and as many as 70 percent of students change their major at least once during their four-year program, and it is predicted that by 2030, there will be a deficit of 7.9 million tech workers alone.

In order to better prepare the future workforce, schools are encouraging career exploration through hands-on experience. The Village School has created educational partnerships throughout Houston to offer students options to find their interests and better prepare them for postsecondary success.

Educational partnerships

Students are prone to changing their majors because often they will go into a field with an impractical idea of what a specific career actually entails. With partnerships between education and industry, Houston is able to better equip students to enter college with a realistic view of what to expect in their major.

While career-focused partnerships are beneficial for students, they also play a huge role in recruiting valuable skilled talent for years to come. A good impression, good mentors and great experience goes a long way when students start job searching.

Tuning into Houston's workforce

High school is the time for students to explore different career options. When students are placed in an internship program as early as the high school level, they are able to see exactly what the day to day looks like while building a foundation of professional development as they start to think about their future. It's important for students to have a realistic vision of what a career looks like.

There are numerous businesses in Houston that are working with high school students to help them gain experience.

For example, a few of the businesses that have partnerships with The Village School include Houston Methodist Hospital, Pimcore, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and Cisco. Students are able to gain experience in a variety of ways including:

Working alongside surgical technicians and experience open-heart surgery and quarantined situations
Learning from cancer researchers who study nicotine addiction in children and the effects on brain development
Leveraging data analytics to develop software helping internal team members organize calendars at a leading SAP company

All students finished their internship with a better understanding of the workforce and the skills necessary to perform in a professional environment.

Finding opportunities for everyone

If students don't attend a high school that offers internships there are still opportunities to gain experience. Many businesses are open to job shadowing or having students volunteer a few hours a week to gain experience over the summer months. The opportunity for experience is out there and available and these opportunities will continue to grow and become more accessible for all students. Houston families and businesses must work together to ensure students know their options before entering college.

Educational partnerships benefit both students and the community. It's crucial for Houston to prepare the next generation's workforce to succeed and fill jobs with capable talent. Students are able to see that while they may not think they are interested in a specific field there are opportunities within the field that match their strengths and interests.

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TeKedra Pierre is the internship coordinator at The Village School.

This week's innovators to know represents a homecoming, an accelerator launch, and a call for tech education. Courtesy photos

3 Houston innovators to know this week

Who's who

This week's innovators to know span across industries — from sports tech to education, but they are all fighting for something here in Houston. Here's what they are focused on bringing to the Houston innovation ecosystem.

Mike T. Brown, founder of Win-Win

Courtesy of Win-Win

Mike T. Brown decided to move his Silicon Valley sports tech platform that gamifies charitable donations to his hometown of Houston. Win-Win, which launched in 2016 and since raised $1.2 million in funding, is ready to scale and launch full-scale during the 2019 NFL season.

"I couldn't be more excited about returning to Houston to become a part of the city's tech revolution," says Brown in the release. "After visiting The Cannon, I immediately felt the energy and have witnessed their commitment to pushing Houston's tech startup movement. I can't wait to get fully plugged into the city's ecosystem, to start hiring local talent and raising money from local investors." Read more about Brown and Win-Win here.

Yvette Casares Willis, director of strategic partnerships for MassChallenge Texas

Courtesy of MassChallenge Texas

Yvette Casares Willis has been working to put Houston on the map for MassChallenge Texas, and her work is finally coming to fruition. The organization opened applications for its inaugural cohort last week. As excited as she is to work with the cohort, Willis is looking forward to what it means for the program to arrive in Houston and help to connect the dots across the city's innovation ecosystem.

"I'm excited about what Houston has to offer," says Willis, who is the director of partnerships for the organization. "We have everything we could possibly provide in this ecosystem to be amazing, as long as we all work together. If we can all collaborate and if we all have the same mission, we can really make a difference in Houston." Read more about Willis and MassChallenge Texas here.

TeKedra Pierre, internship coordinator at The Village School

Courtesy of The Village School

Tekedra Pierre's job is to help students be aware of real-life needs in the workforce through internship programs. And what's extremely clear to Pierre is the need for more professionals in tech — specifically the cybersecurity space. She wrote a piece for InnovationMap on the subject.

"Employers struggle to keep employees up to speed on the latest technologies and skill sets needed to succeed and thrive in the rapidly changing and evolving business landscape," she writes. "To remain competitive, Houston businesses must attract qualified workers to fill these positions that range from cybersecurity to industrial technology, engineering and medicine. And the earlier we can reach them, the better." Read Pierre's piece here.

Like a lot of cities, Houston might have a talent problem when it comes to cybersecurity. Getty Images

How Houston can bridge the cybersecurity talent gap

From education to implementation

According to Inc.'s Emerging Risks Survey, the talent shortage jumped to first place as the top risk for businesses worldwide in 2019. More specifically, a recent study reported a gap of almost three million global cybersecurity jobs.

Cyber attacks continue to skyrocket but there are nowhere near enough cybersecurity professionals to handle all the threats. The field has plenty of job openings, companies are desperate for talent and employees can eventually earn $95K a year, and often more. So, what's the issue?

Employers struggle to keep employees up to speed on the latest technologies and skill sets needed to succeed and thrive in the rapidly changing and evolving business landscape. To remain competitive, Houston businesses must attract qualified workers to fill these positions that range from cybersecurity to industrial technology, engineering and medicine. And the earlier we can reach them, the better.

One way to address the talent gap is for Houston employers, academic institutions and parents to share the responsibility to prepare young children to be adaptable. While these ideas are for the cybersecurity space, they can be applied to any industry.

Parents: Pay attention to child's interests at a young age

Encouraging creativity and exploration at home is the first step to fostering children's potential career interest. Children show at a young age what they are interested in. Do they color and draw? They may like a more creative field like graphic design. Nurturing artistic interests at home can be as simple as letting kids make projects with household supplies such as paper towel rolls, or old clothes and asking them about their creations.

Or, do they tinker and take things apart? Foster those engineering and computer interests through career days, science fests, coding camps and through trips to retail locations like Apple and Microsoft. When parents, guardians, older siblings, aunts, or uncles express excitement in their interests, children are more likely to feel encouraged and continue finding their passion over time.

Educators: Encourage career exploration

Educators are continuously working to prepare students for the workforce by asking the persistent question of how do we teach students about jobs and careers that haven't even been created yet? We can't. We don't prepare them for jobs, but we provide them with the skills to be adaptable, flexible, creative, critical, collaborative and curious. At The Village School in Houston, we have an internship program that helps students gain a better sense of their future, even for those who are unsure about their career path.

Businesses: Shape the next workforce through educational partnerships

Local businesses must have relationships with schools and organizations. Reflect on what your business can do to better prepare the next generation of talent. Go beyond the norm of only involving college-age students and also partner with local K-12 schools to broaden outreach even more extensively. This will work to help students have a better idea of potential careers and can also be a great recruitment tool. Offer internships to students, externships to teachers and be vocal about the skills and foundation necessary to succeed at your workplace. The talent shortage can't be fixed overnight but businesses can work to be proactive in creating the partnerships and programs needed.

At Village, we currently have partnerships with companies like Cisco, Houston Methodist Hospital, and Pimcore. Our students learn directly from these companies exactly what a career can look like and gain a better sense of what expectations are in the real world. With Cisco, students are able to acquire experience within in-demand careers in computer science, information technology and cybersecurity to see first hand what these jobs consist of.

Dell Technologies recently published a report saying 85 percent of the jobs in 2030 haven't been invented yet. That's an intimidating statistic for today's learners — and businesses. Together, parents, business executives, and educators can prepare the next generation of workers to succeed while combating the crucial need to fill jobs with passionate and capable employees.

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TeKedra Pierre is the internship coordinator at The Village School.

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Houston VC funding nears $1B in first half of 2026, report says

by the numbers

Despite a weak second quarter, venture capital funding for Houston-area startups approached $1 billion in the first half of 2026, the region’s highest first-half total since 2022, according to the latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor.

This year’s first-half total of $962.4 million represented a nearly 8 percent increase over last year’s first-half total of $891.7 million. Dating back to 2016, this year’s first-half haul lags behind only 2021 and 2022 for the most first-half funding.

Houston’s year-over-year VC jump of 73 percent in the first quarter of 2026 more than made up for the year-over-year drop of 34 percent in the second quarter of 2026, according to the report.

Deal count tells a more encouraging story: Houston startups closed 102 deals in the first half, up from 93 a year earlier and the region’s busiest first half since 2022. However, the average deal size shrank, as no single funding source dominated the total.

Keep in mind that PitchBook and NVCA routinely revise quarterly numbers upward to reflect deals that were reported after a previous quarter’s data was published. So, in the case of Houston, numbers initially reported for the first quarter of 2026 may not match newly reported numbers.

Perhaps the most notable Houston-area deal announced in the first half of this year was Cart.com’s $180 million growth equity investment, led by Springcoast Partners. Cart.com is an e-commerce platform and logistics provider.

PitchBook-NVCA data shows Houston’s VC activity is growing modestly, delivering better numbers in the first half of 2026 versus 2024 and 2025, but it still sits below the highs of 2021 and 2022. This is one sign that so far in 2026, the national VC boom isn’t benefiting non-hub markets like Houston the way it’s boosting some hub markets, especially Silicon Valley and New York City.

Nationwide, AI dominated VC funding in the first half of this year. The sector made up 86 percent of VC from January through June. The report notes that the markets have still struggled to unlock IPOs, with SpaceX being the biggest exception, and few M&A deals outside health care have been significant.

14 climatech startups join Greentown Houston in first half of 2026

green team

Climatech incubator Greentown Labs reports that 14 startups have joined its Houston community so far this year.

The companies are among 30 new startups to have joined Greentown Houston and Greentown Boston in 2026. Four of the companies are headquartered in Houston.

The startups are working on a range of "hydrogen-powered heavy-duty transport to AI-driven grid interconnection," according to Greentown.

The local startups that joined Greentown Houston include:

Houston-based Focis AI, which transforms industrial laser scans into structured asset intelligence to automatically identify, classify and map components in refineries and plants
Houston-based Iron Lattice, which develops next-generation memory technology for AI and high-performance computing that improves energy efficiency, endurance and scalability while remaining compatible with existing semiconductor manufacturing
Houston-based Orbital Arc, which is developing a new ion engine designed to improve the efficiency and scalability of spacecraft propulsion from low Earth orbit to deep space
Houston-based Sustain Energy LLC, which delivers cleaner, lower-cost fuel to industrial customers in pipeline-absent, underserved markets, cutting their energy costs and emissions with no infrastructure investment on their end

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

Ankara-based AIS Field, which develops robotic, AI-assisted non-destructive inspection systems, including submersible tank and boiler crawlers
San Francisco-based Armada AI, which builds rapidly deployable modular and edge data centers that run on local, stranded, or renewable power
San Francisco-based Armeta, which turns complex engineering drawings and legacy documentation into structured, usable data
Pittsburgh-based Atlas Robotics, which develops a Physical AI platform that powers autonomous material-handling robots and AI-guided forklifts
Ghana-based Cocoa Potash, which transforms high-emissions agricultural waste from cocoa, coconut, and palm-nut into organic potash, fertilizer and renewable energy
Israel-based Criaterra, which produces low-carbon, cement-free building materials
Italy-based ETAK, which manufactures modular reactors that convert solid waste into clean syngas
Kenya-based FelixFusion, which uses its Felix platform to model every grid connection point, including capacity, upgrade costs, and constraints
San Diego-based Gemini Energy, which builds next-generation fuel cells for data-center power
Tokyo-based Hibot, which develops robotic systems for inspecting and maintaining infrastructure in hazardous, hard-to-access environments
Austin-based Sheetak, which designs and manufactures thermoelectric coolers, generators, and assemblies for solid-state cooling and energy harvesting
The Netherlands-based ToPerform, which makes AI-powered, non-intrusive fouling sensors that monitor pipelines around the clock and predict the optimal cleaning time

Another 16 startups joined Greentown's Boston incubator. See the full list of new members here.

More than 100 startups joined Greentown last year, according to an end-of-year reflection shared by Greentown CEO Georgina Campbell Flatter. Read more about them here.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

$12M pharmaceutical manufacturing facility to be built in Sugar Land

coming soon

A nearly $12 million drug manufacturing facility is coming to Sugar Land.

City leaders in Sugar Land recently approved a $1.3 million performance-based incentive for DeliverIt Group, a Sugar Land-based provider of specialty pharmacy, infusion therapy and clinical care services, for the development of the 60,000-square-foot facility.

The facility, which will be registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), will compound medication. The process of drug compounding combines, mixes or alters ingredients to create a medication tailored to a certain patient. A compounded drug is created when an FDA-approved drug can’t meet a patient’s needs.

The facility, which will employ 55 people, will expand DeliverIt’s offerings from specialty pharmacy and infusion services to advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing. In a press release, the City of Sugar Land says the facility reinforces the suburb’s status as a hub for life sciences and health care innovation.

DeliverIt, founded in 2010, already employs about 60 people.

The $1.3 million incentive, to be distributed over the course of 10 years, is being funded through the Sugar Land Development Corporation’s 4A sales tax program.

“The addition of a pharmaceutical manufacturing operation of this caliber reflects the type of targeted growth we want to see in Sugar Land,” Jennifer Alexander, business development manager for the City of Sugar Land, said in a news release. “Our focus on smart, strategic investment means supporting life sciences innovators in ways that maximize existing assets while driving long-term community prosperity.”

The current size of the U.S. drug-compounding market is estimated at $7.42 billion, and it’s projected to climb to $12.79 billion by 2035, according to Towards Healthcare Research and Consulting.

Drug compounding is gaining momentum due to increases in personalized medicine and personal treatment approaches, with growth being supported by aging populations and the rise of chronic illnesses, Towards Healthcare says.

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