Here's who won big for Houston innovation. Photos courtesy

In a virtual awards program, Houston Exponential has revealed the winners of the inaugural Listies awards.

The Listies, brought to you by Houston Exponential in partnership with InnovationMap, named the winning companies and people across 12 awards on November 20 at 3 pm as a part of Impact Hub's annual The Houston Innovation Summit (THIS).

Nominations were open until Friday, November 6, and then a group of judges made up of members of the Houston innovation ecosystem reviewed the submissions to settle on the 38 finalists. Click here to see the finalists.

Here's who took home the big wins.

SDO Superstar: MassChallenge Texas

Photo courtesy of MassChallenge

A startup development organization can be an accelerator program, an incubator, or a coworking space — and organizations falling into all three of these sectors were nominated for this category. MassChallenge Texas, which has been running its non-equity, general accelerator program in Houston for two years, stood out to judges to take the win for the SDO Superstar category.

Individual Contributor: Slawek Omylski of SecurityGate

Photo via LinkedIn

The individual contributor award was meant to find and recognize a non-founder who was essential to the success of a Houston startup, and that's exactly how SecurityGate's team sees Slawek Omylski, director of engineering. Not only has he been essential from the start over three years ago when he joined as employee No. 4, but Omylski, when unexpectedly having to move back home to Italy, never missed a single meeting or tech deployment despite being an ocean away from the rest of his team. Known as "Suave" by his teammates, his nominators say Omylski is usually the first to arrive at the office and the last to leave.

Civic Innovation: Annapurna Solutions

Image viaannapurnasolutions.org

Everyone knows that the key to sustainability is reducing, reusing, and recycling, but the fact of the matter is no one has quite perfected recycling. Houston-based Annapurna Solutions is stepping in to help. The company provides innovative technology solutions to address waste and recycling challenges, helping to make cities smart and sustainable — like the company's ReciklApp.

Welcome to Houston: Greentown Labs

Photo via greentownlabs.com

Greentown Labs is a startup development organization, but it's are also a startup itself, but when it opens its doors in Houston in the spring, the organization isn't starting from scratch. After years of working with over 200 climatech companies in the Boston area, Greentown's expansion into Houston means incubating Houston energy tech companies and furthering the conversation and activation within the energy transition.

Investor of the Year: Integr8d Capital

Photo via TMC.edu

John "J.R." Reale has been a well respected mentor, entrepreneur, and investor in Houston for years. His firm Integr8d Capital has invested in several Houston companies, including Liongard from seed stage to series A and series B. Reale is also the entrepreneur in residence for the TMC Innovation Institute.

Corporate Innovator: Houston Methodist

Courtesy of Methodist Hospital/Facebook

Houston Methodist and its Center for Innovation led by Roberta Schwartz is leading health tech innovation in Houston. In January, the hospital opened its Technology Hub, 3,500-square-foot space renovated from a former 18-room patient wing to showcase and test new digital health technologies like virtual reality, ambient listening, wearables, and more. Additionally, the hub helped with the training of dozens of doctors with the rise of telemedicine during COVID-19.

Outstanding Leadership: Grace Rodriguez

Photo courtesy of Grace Rodriguez

Grace Rodriguez's career spans industry and time, but her leadership has been consistent throughout. She currently serves Impact Hub Houston as CEO and executive director. Her nominator calls her an inspiration and someone who "shows up," clearly loving everything she does and is responsible. During COVID-19, she's gone above and beyond to provide resources and information to everyone who needs it, including launching a fund to help pay for meals for health care workers and first responders. The LIFE Fund raised over $20,000.

COVID Phoenix: Luminare

Image via luminaremed.com

Originally founded by Dr. Sarma Velamuri to treat and fight sepsis, Luminare took its sepsis platform and pivoted it to created a COVID self-assessment and testing tool. Their digital platform directed 5.5 million people to COVID-19 testing sites in just 21 days, according to its nomination. The tool was used by Harris County and several other entities.

DEI Champion: Maria Maso

Photo courtesy of Nijalon Dunn

Maria Maso is looking out for minorities when it comes to investment. As the founder and CEO of the Business Angel Minority Association (baMa) — an Angel Association aimed at bridging minority-founded startups with accesses to capital — Maria has been a champion for diversity. She also has helped to educate and activate 40 diverse investors through baMa's Diversity Investor Academy, according to her nomination.

Mentor of the Year: Landi Spearman

Photo via LinkedIn

Landi Spearman's approach to mentorship, according to her nominee, is to mentor the full person — from professional to personal life — through Organized SHIFT, which focuses on helping highly productive leaders, individuals and organizations in their quest to sustain positive growth internally and externally. She also supports entrepreneurs though The Ion, Station Houston, General Assembly, the National Urban League, Power to Fly, Black Women in Science and Engineering, the Greater Houston Partnership, the Greater Houston Black Chamber, Pink Petro, and more.

People's Choice and Soonicorn: Liongard

Photos via LinkedIn

People's Choice was based off how many nominations the startups received, and Liongard was a clear winner. The company, which also won in the Soonicorn category, has experienced major growth and, as the nominations read, that's to both Joe Alapat and Vincent Tran, co-founders, credit. The company has raised $12 million to date — the most recent round, a $10 million Series A — closed this year.

Houston-based SaaS company, Liongard, has closed its recent fundraising round led by one of HX Venture Fund's portfolio funds. Getty Images

Houston software startup closes $17M series B

money moves

A fast-growing software-as-a-service company has closed its latest round of funding to the tune of $17 million.

An information technology automation and management company, Liongard's round was led by Updata Partners with contribution by TDF Ventures, Integr8d Capital, and private investors. With customers in 20 countries, Liongard saw triple-digit customer growth and doubled its staff over the past 18 months, according to a news release.

Liongard's CEO, Joe Alapat, who co-founded the company with COO Vincent Tran in 2015, says that the new funds will continue to support its Roar platform — a software product that creates a single dashboard for all data systems and allows automation of managed service providers, or MSPs, for auditing and security within a company's IT.

"Since the launch of Liongard, the platform's adoption and popularity with MSPs has grown rapidly, transforming Liongard into a highly recognized brand in the MSP ecosystem," Alapat says in the release. "This new investment and the continued confidence of our investors will fuel our growth by giving us the means to further advance our solution's capabilities and serve our customers at an even better level."

Liongard's total funding now sits at over $20 million. Last year, the company raised a $4.5 million series A round following a $1.3 million seed round in 2018. TDF Ventures and Integr8d Capital have previously invested in the company.

Lead investor, Updata Partners, is based in Washington D.C. and invests in SaaS, tech-enabled service providers, and digital media and e-commerce. The HX Venture Fund, a fund-of-funds under Houston Exponential, has invested in Updata Partner's recent fund.

"Liongard has recognized an industry gap and addressed the need for greater visibility in how systems are managed," says Carter Griffin, a general partner at Updata Partners, in the release.

"The team created a valuable solution for MSPs, making the company an excellent investment opportunity for Updata. The combination of Liongard's in-demand platform, strong market presence, robust roadmap for ongoing growth and strong leadership team point to a company well-positioned for ongoing success."


Joe Alapat is the CEO of Houston-based Liongard. Courtesy of Liongard

Houston-based Liongard's Roar technology is helping its customers get all their IT services under one umbrella. Getty Images

Houston-based B2B tech company is connecting the dots on IT services

Hear me Roar

Houston-based startup Liongard, an Information Technology automation and management company, was founded on the idea that managing data and technology for companies shouldn't be so difficult.

Before founding Liongard, CEO Joe Alapat and COO Vincent Tran owned and operated Empact IT, an IT company, for more 10 years. In the decade they owned the company, Alapat said they saw the industry completely change as protecting a business' information and data became more challenging.

"[IT is] not all on one place in a data center anymore: it's in the Cloud, it's on the network, it's in app services and in on-premise [offices]," Alapat says. "The security problem is huge and that's exploding because … we lack visibility into basic things when we're managing IT. We just want to be able to manage it and get back to sanity."

After the duo sold the IT company in 2012, Alapat and Tran used the funds from the sale to launch Liongard in 2015 with the focus of automating the management of the plethora of systems that can overwhelm Managed Service Providers, or IT Service Providers.

"Everyone thinks their IT department is high-tech," Alapat says. "Unfortunately, the department that's supposed to be so high-tech is actually pretty manual. And they won't let on that it's challenging, but it really is [and] there's a lot of manual work involved."

So, Alapat and Tran developed Roar: a software product that creates a single dashboard for all data systems including the Cloud and apps, server networks, and on-site systems to make accessing and protecting the data easier. Alapat said Roar is able to inspect multiple systems and bring back rich information without logging into each different system.

Liongard joined entrepreneurial accelerator Station Houston — an association that helps place young businesses in front of investors — in June 2016 and gained access to its network of mentors, advisers, and investors.

In spring 2018, Liongard completed its Seed Stage round of its capital campaign with $1.3 million in investments. With these initial funds, Liongard was able to put Roar on the market in April 2018 and expand its client base — growing from two clients to now close to 200 customers in less than a year.

This year, the company will launch the second leg of its capital campaign with the goal of raising between $3 million to $4 million to help expand the company further.

Alapat said he thinks the company has been received well by Houston investors because Liongard offers a product that other IT management companies don't.

"No one has a unified way to look across the Cloud and network and apps and services and servers," Alapat

says. "There's plenty of different dashboards and solutions that looks at one or two of those things, but there's no single solution that consolidates all of that. That's what makes us different — that we unify all of that under one umbrella."

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UH researchers develop breakthrough material to boost efficiency of sodium-ion batteries

eyes on clean energy

A research lab at the University of Houston has developed a new type of material for sodium-ion batteries that could make them more efficient and boost their energy performance.

Led by Pieremanuele Canepa, Robert Welch assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UH, the Canepa Research Laboratory is working on a new material called sodium vanadium phosphate, which improves sodium-ion battery performance by increasing the energy density. Energy density is the amount of energy stored per kilogram, and the new material can do so by more than 15 percent. With a higher energy density of 458 watt-hours per kilogram — compared to the 396 watt-hours per kilogram in older sodium-ion batteries — this material brings sodium technology closer to competing with lithium-ion batteries, according to the researchers.

The Canepa Lab used theoretical expertise and computational methods to discover new materials and molecules to help advance clean energy technologies. The team at UH worked with the research groups headed by French researchers Christian Masquelier and Laurence Croguennec from the Laboratoire de Reáctivité et de Chimie des Solides, which is a CNRS laboratory part of the Université de Picardie Jules Verne, in Amiens France, and the Institut de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Bordeaux, Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France for the experimental work on the project.

The researchers then created a battery prototype using the new materia sodium vanadium phosphate, which demonstrated energy storage improvements. The material is part of a group called “Na superionic conductors” or NaSICONs, which is made to let sodium ions move in and out of the battery during charging and discharging.

“The continuous voltage change is a key feature,” Canepa says in a news release. “It means the battery can perform more efficiently without compromising the electrode stability. That’s a game-changer for sodium-ion technology.”

The synthesis method used to create sodium vanadium phosphate may be applied to other materials with similar chemistries, which could create new opportunities for advanced energy storage. A paper of this work was published in the journal Nature Materials.

"Our goal is to find clean, sustainable solutions for energy storage," Canepa adds. "This material shows that sodium-ion batteries can meet the high-energy demands of modern technology while being cost-effective and environmentally friendly."

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapital.

Houston hospital names leading cancer scientist as new academic head

new hire

Houston Methodist Academic Institute has named cancer clinician and scientist Dr. Jenny Chang as its new executive vice president, president, CEO, and chief academic officer.

Chang was selected following a national search and will succeed Dr. H. Dirk Sostman, who will retire in February after 20 years of leadership. Chang is the director of the Houston Methodist Dr. Mary and Ron Neal Cancer Center and the Emily Herrmann Presidential Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research. She has been with Houston Methodist for 15 years.

Over the last five years, Chang has served as the institute’s chief clinical science officer and is credited with strengthening cancer clinical trials. Her work has focused on therapy-resistant cancer stem cells and their treatment, particularly relating to breast cancer.

Her work has generated more than $35 million in funding for Houston Methodist from organizations like the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, according to the health care system. In 2021, Dr. Mary Neal and her husband Ron Neal, whom the cancer center is now named after, donated $25 million to support her and her team’s research on advanced cancer therapy.

In her new role, Chang will work to expand clinical and translational research and education across Houston Methodist in digital health, robotics and bioengineered therapeutics.

“Dr. Chang’s dedication to Houston Methodist is unparalleled,” Dr. Marc L. Boom, Houston Methodist president and CEO, said in a news release. “She is committed to our mission and to helping our patients, and her clinical expertise, research innovation and health care leadership make her the ideal choice for leading our academic mission into an exciting new chapter.”

Chang is a member of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Stand Up to Cancer Scientific Advisory Council. She earned her medical degree from Cambridge University in England and completed fellowship training in medical oncology at the Royal Marsden Hospital/Institute for Cancer Research. She earned her research doctorate from the University of London.

She is also a professor at Weill Cornell Medical School, which is affiliated with the Houston Methodist Academic Institute.

Texas A&M awarded $1.3M federal grant to develop clean energy tech from electronic waste

seeing green

Texas A&M University in College Station has received a nearly $1.3 million federal grant for development of clean energy technology.

The university will use the $1,280,553 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a cost-effective, sustainable method for extracting rare earth elements from electronic waste.

Rare earth elements (REEs) are a set of 17 metallic elements.

“REEs are essential components of more than 200 products, especially high-tech consumer products, such as cellular telephones, computer hard drives, electric and hybrid vehicles, and flat-screen monitors and televisions,” according to the Eos news website.

REEs also are found in defense equipment and technology such as electronic displays, guidance systems, lasers, and radar and sonar systems, says Eos.

The grant awarded to Texas A&M was among $17 million in DOE grants given to 14 projects that seek to accelerate innovation in the critical materials sector. The federal Energy Act of 2020 defines a critical material — such as aluminum, cobalt, copper, lithium, magnesium, nickel, and platinum — as a substance that faces a high risk of supply chain disruption and “serves an essential function” in the energy sector.

“DOE is helping reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign supply chains through innovative solutions that will tap domestic sources of the critical materials needed for next-generation technologies,” says U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. “These investments — part of our industrial strategy — will keep America’s growing manufacturing industry competitive while delivering economic benefits to communities nationwide.”

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapital.