Rice Innovation announced its most recent awardees of the One Small Step Grant: Actile Technologies, IronLattice and MightyMito from the Preston, Tour and Hilton labs respectively.
Launched in September 2023, the One Small Step Grant program aims to support lab-stage projects across the Rice campus, providing crucial capital for projects to spin out of the university and successfully attract investment from angel investors and venture capital.
In its fourth cycle in two years, the program received 24 applications from across campus, including ideas for medical devices, therapeutics and novel tactile materials. After a rigorous evaluation process, three outstanding ventures were selected for funding, receiving $50,000 each.
“We’re thrilled to see more interest and support from the faculty and student body at Rice for this program. The impact these grants make toward furthering our mission of entrepreneurship makes a huge difference,” said Nafisa Istami, senior innovation manager at Rice Innovation.
Actile Technologies is developing a platform of smart textile devices that enhance human performance, providing thermal relief in extreme environments and delivering haptic communication in information-dense situations. This technology comes from the laboratory of Daniel Preston, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rice. Preston is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the ASME Old Guard Early Career Award and the Young Faculty Research Award in Rice’s School of Engineering and Computing. Barclay Jumet, CEO of Actile and co-founder with Preston, is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering in Preston’s lab and has received the NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship and the Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowship for his diverse research in wearable and human-centric technologies.
“Support from the One Small Step Grant is exactly what we need to translate our wearable tech from the lab to commercialization, and we’re looking forward to making a real-world impact with work that started here at Rice,” Preston said.
Spinning out technology from James Tour’s lab, IronLattice is developing a superlattice-based ferroelectric device that enables analog, nonvolatile in-memory computation for artificial intelligence workloads. Tour is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry and professor of materials science and nanoengineering and computer science with over 800 research publications and over 250 patents. IronLattice is led by Jaeho Shin, postdoctoral researcher with over 10 years of hands-on experience in semiconductor device fabrication, electrical characterizations and neuromorphic devices based on 2D, oxide and ferroelectric materials and advised by Tawfik Jarjour, Rice alum with over 13 years of experience at Accenture Strategy focusing on semiconductor manufacturing solutions.
MightyMito, led by Mario Escobar from Isaac Hilton’s lab in collaboration with Dr. Ravi Ghanta, is a gene activation platform that leverages CRISPRa to upregulate PPARGC1A, a master regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis, directly within cardiomyocytes. Hilton is an associate professor of bioengineering and biosciences at Rice and a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Scholar in cancer research. Ghanta is a professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine, where he also serves as the chief of cardiac surgery at Ben Taub Hospital. Escobar is an assistant research professor focusing on the creation of genetic tools that allow the control of the number and function of mitochondria.
“With the support of the One Small Step Grant from Rice University, we are excited to advance our novel technology toward commercialization as an innovative cardiac therapy,” Escobar said. “Heart failure remains a major unmet medical need, and our technology represents a fundamentally new approach to treatment. This support enables us to advance our research and development, moving us closer to our ultimate goal of providing a powerful, life-changing intervention for patients with heart failure.”
To ensure an objective evaluation of the projects and vote on the awards, Rice Innovation engages a grant selection committee composed of experts, including entrepreneurs, investors and corporate executives from various industries. The committee’s diverse expertise plays a pivotal role in guiding the strategic direction of the One Small Step Grant program and ensuring its success.
For more information about the One Small Step Grant and Rice Innovation, please visit innovation.rice.edu.