Four Rice University fellows and three Rice-affiliated startup ventures were selected to be a part of the inaugural Houston cohort of The Activate Fellowship for 2024. Activate is widely recognized as one of the flagship entrepreneurship programs that support startups focused on deep tech, and these four founders are the only representatives of Texas academia in the cohort.
The Activate Fellowship is a nonprofit that offers a two year, $100,000 per year paid stipend and an additional $100,000 in research and development for scientists-turned-founders. Of the 11 Houston Activate fellows, four of them are Rice-affiliated: Alec Ajnsztajn, Ryan DuChanois, Yang Xia and Wei Meng.
Two of the Rice-affiliated startups, Coflux Purification and Solidec, have won several startup competitions previously and will office at the Rice Nexus in the Ion, Houston’s innovation hub powered by Rice. Both Coflux and Solidec are also One Small Step Grant awardees and Innovation Fellows at Rice’s Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
“Rice is incredibly excited to represent Texas in The Activate Fellowship,” said Paul Cherukuri, Rice’s chief innovation officer. “These fellows embody the best of Rice entrepreneurship, science and technology work — inspired research leading to real-world outcomes.”
Coflux Purification is fighting against per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals,” that are polluting water and causing major health problems like heart and liver disease, birth defects and cancer. The company’s product allows industries and water providers to cheaply remove harmful chemicals to provide safe drinking water at a fraction of current energy use.
Solidec extracts molecular building blocks from water and air, then upgrades them into pure chemicals and fuels without carbon emissions. The company’s mission is to reverse decades of emissions and produce sustainable chemicals and fuels for years to come by “capturing yesterday’s emissions and generating tomorrow’s fuels.”
Another Rice-affiliated startup, LumiStrain, has developed a strain-sensing smart skin (S4) — an ultrathin film embedded with carbon nanotubes acting as strain sensors. When applied to structures, S4 provides comprehensive, high-resolution strain maps crucial for stress analysis, damage detection and simulation validation. This technology helps industries to refine designs, reduce maintenance costs and prevent catastrophic failures.
The inaugural Houston cohort will benefit from the city’s rapidly expanding innovation ecosystem and the region’s tradition of innovation in energy, materials, life sciences, space and other sectors, according to Activate. All participants are working toward advancing technologies across agriculture, life sciences, chemistry, materials, robotics, built environment, space and aeronautics and carbon management. The ventures range from tracking crop pollinators using lidar and machine-learning algorithms to affordable robotic hands to address labor shortages, and the world’s first high-throughput and low-cost nanomanufacturing system.
Learn more about the Activate Houston cohort here.