Rice University’s Office of STEM Engagement (R-STEM), the Houston Methodist-Rice Digital Health Institute and Houston Methodist are launching a three-year program that equips Houston-area high school and community college students and the teachers who serve them with practical skills in biomedical hardware and artificial intelligence (AI) for health. The program, called Explorations: Advancing Texas Workforce — Experiential Learning in Digital Health Technologies, is funded by an almost $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation and will run from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30, 2028.
“This program opens doors and provides practical, hands-on experiences tied to new developments in health care,” said Carolyn Nichol, principal investigator and director of R-STEM. “Students and teachers won’t just hear about digital health — they’ll build circuits, test sensors, train AI models, talk with clinicians and prototype solutions to problems that matter to patients and care teams. This kind of experience can change what students envision as possibilities for their futures.”
The initiative leverages the unique innovation ecosystem between Rice and Houston Methodist to immerse participants in clinical needs and industry practices. Each year, the program will engage 15 high school students from the 10th and 11th grades, 15 community college students and 10 high school teachers from math, physics, computer science and career/technical education.
“Houston Methodist cares for patients from around the world, and we see daily where thoughtful technology can improve lives,” said Dr. Sadeer Al-Kindi, co-principal investigator, the Jerold B. Katz Investigator and associate professor of medicine at Houston Methodist. “By pairing learners with our clinicians and Rice mentors, we’ll help them translate ideas into prototypes, understand the realities of clinical environments and appreciate the ethics and responsibility that come with building AI for health.”
The program offers two intensive two-week summer tracks — digital health technologies (hardware), where participants work with wearables, sensors, microcontrollers, circuits and rapid prototyping, and health care AI (software), covering Python, PyTorch, data science, computer vision and model building. Both tracks will feature an observation day at Houston Methodist to conduct needs assessments in real clinical settings.
During the academic year, students enter an applications phase with seven Saturday team sessions that take teams from problem discovery and value proposition through iterative prototyping, supported by Rice graduate-student mentors, clinicians and industry partners. Entrepreneurship and communication training from the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship will prepare participants to pitch their solutions and understand pathways to scale, culminating in an Innovators Showcase where teams present prototypes and impact cases to educators, clinicians and industry judges. Teachers receive targeted development in digital health and AI content as well as experiential-learning pedagogy, so they can create and share classroom lessons that extend the program’s impact to thousands of students.
“Texas needs a workforce that understands both hardware and software — how sensors generate data and how AI turns that data into insights,” said Ashutosh Sabharwal, co-principal investigator, the Ernest Dell Butcher Professor of Engineering at Rice and one of the founding co-directors of the Houston Methodist-Rice Digital Health Institute. “This program puts students and teachers at that intersection and gives them a front-row seat to real clinical problems and the chance to help solve them.”
“This collaborative project carries real purpose and will provide both content and real-world experiences to varying groups that will inspire curiosity, creativity and innovation,” added Brittany Templeton, R-STEM assistant director for computer science and mathematics. “When we create this immersive cohort where each team is made of members bringing their own unique experiences to the table and coming together to solve problems that have the potential for real-world impact, it provides the perfect environment to solve and engineer solutions. I am very eager to see what our cohorts come up with and what our teachers take back to their classrooms.”
Digital health — spanning wearables, home-based monitoring, smart medical devices and AI-assisted decision tools — is reshaping how care is delivered. Yet many learners have little exposure to the skills behind these technologies. By lowering barriers with paid, hands-on experiences, mentorship and direct hospital engagement, the program expands opportunity, strengthens local talent pipelines and accelerates innovations that can make care more accessible, affordable and personal.
“Our goal is that every participant leaves with marketable skills, a network of mentors and a clear path to college or technical careers in health care technology,” said Matthew Cushing, R-STEM executive director and co-principal investigator. “Teachers will carry these experiences back to their classrooms, multiplying the impact across the region.”
Additional key contributors include Joseph Young, assistant teaching professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, and industry collaborators who will provide real-world context and potential project challenges.