Cellula BioPharma, Inc.
Houston, Texas
Cellula BioPharma, Inc. (Cellula), an IND stage biotechnology start-up, was founded by entrepreneurs and scientists from Texas A&M University in Houston, TX, in 2022. Cellula has pioneered development of a novel proprietary platform of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies for targeting solid tumors.
Circle Concrete Tech, Inc. – Alternate
Austin, Texas
Circle Concrete Tech is a startup company based in Austin, TX. They have been developing and commercializing cost-effective, environmentally friendly concrete products and technologies, including their product— Plient concrete. Plient concrete is a specialty concrete mixture that contains both recycled steel fiber from scrap tire and recycled pavement aggregate.
Corveus Medical
Houston, Texas
Corveus Medical is developing a one-time, catheter-based solution that provides instant relief from the symptoms of chronic heart failure. Heart failure affects over 6M Americans, and hospitalizations contribute to a mounting cost burden of $35B on the healthcare system. Corveus’ device performs a unique, targeted nerve ablation to inactivate a sympathetic nerve branch, which has been shown in several publications to provide significant benefit for class III heart failure patients.
CryoDesalination LLC
Houston, Texas
Industrial desalination & wastewater are stuck. High CAPEX limits their use & the only way to lower OPEX is to build enormous plants. CryoDesalination has a solution. With a small carbon footprint, CryoDesalination lowers the costs of: desalination; treating high salinity feeds; recovering clean water, harvesting minerals such as lithium; or achieving ZLD. CryoDesalination can treat water from oceans; brackish aquifers; mining; oil exploration; chemical processes; manufacturing; or agriculture.
Developmate, Inc. – Alternate
San Antonio, Texas
Based in San Antonio, Developmate, Inc. is building location intelligence software that saves real estate developers time and money by aggregating and analyzing data onto one easy-to-use web map application. The first product, built for affordable housing developers on ArcGIS, was launched in Aug. 2022 and has generated over $100K in sales. The second product, currently in development, will allow real estate professionals to collaborate and use data to select and validate sites on one platform.
DrillDocs
Houston, Texas
DrillDocs is a next-generation drilling services company deploying computer vision technologies with drilling and geo-mechanics expertise to reduce Operator’s emissions, loss of hole risk, and non-productive time while drilling oil, gas, and geothermal wells.
Ember Sleep
Houston, Texas
Ember Sleep is the next generation of apnea treatment. It is a medical device fabricated at the point-of-care to treat sleep apnea through a comfortable, non-contact muscle stimulation. This novel treatment fits comfortably in the patients’ mouth during sleep to open the airway and ultimately improve health and feel more well-rested.
HPTechAi LLC
Bryan, Texas
HPTech is developing provably safe self-driving truck technologies that enable freight carriers to fill their driver shortage by increasing asset utilization. Operators safely take the required rest in a moving truck while a team of trucks is operated by a single driver. Trucks no longer have to park between their destination and origin which approaches doubling the capacity of the freight industry without changing the number of trucks or drivers.
Luci
Houston, Texas
Luci is a game to financial independence for Gen-Z and Millennials designed to build healthy personal finance habits. We achieve this by coaching personal finance and making it simple and fun to set, track, and accomplish personal finance goals (budgeting, saving, building credit, investing).
NeuraStasis Inc.
Houston, Texas
NeuraStasis is pressing pause on ischemic stroke. Our patent-pending non-invasive neurostimulation technology coordinates the activation of cranial nerve reflexes to preserve brain tissue. When “time is brain,” we aim to slow things down to give providers more time to intervene. By slowing down stroke progression, we can enable more patients to reach life-saving treatments and give them a better chance of returning to their everyday lives after a stroke.
Opsin Biotherapeutics, Inc.
Bedford, Texas
Opsin Biotherapeutics is focused on providing a non-opioid alternative for the 100 M Americans that suffer from chronic pain. Our patented optogenetic technology uses a non-viral, laser gene delivery to place a light receptor protein (opsin) gene inside those neurons of the spine that inhibit pain, which are then activated with an implanted light source or potentially with an external, transdermal, light source for peripheral nerve pain.
Pike Robotics
Austin, Texas
For owners of above-ground petrochemical storage tanks who experience difficulty maintaining their floating roof seals, Pike Robotics provides an in-service robotic inspection solution that guarantees safety of facility personnel, reduces operating expenses by 85%, and helps to remove around 480,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by improving the accuracy of the inspection results. This is a solution that is helping the industry solve a major pain point that exists today.
PIRvision Lens
Austin, Texas
They work to solve the problem of occupancy detection for device manufacturers in broad markets (energy, lighting, HVAC, security, defense, and more). PIRvision created ActiveLens – a patented technology that augments existing passive infrared (PIR) sensors to detect occupancy and measure more than 200 variables effectively. It’s simple – a smart device is only as smart as its dumbest component, PIRs have not changed much over 40 years. Traditional PIRs are great at motion detection, not occupancy detection.
Predyct, Inc. – Alternate
Houston, Texas
Predyct delivers zero-power sensors & wireless network for automating energy infrastructure management. Coupled with hybrid AI algorithms, we offer predictive insights based on field data, enabling our clients to enhance productivity, reduce costs, and minimize environmental impact.
Prosia Therapeutics, Inc.
College Station, Texas
Fibrosing diseases are associated with more deaths in the U.S. than cancer. Prosia is an early-stage company led by 3 TAMU faculty with lead compounds that block pulmonary fibrosis and reduce cardiac fibrosis in animal models, and show higher efficacy than competing technologies. In this multi-billion dollar market, we have a unique approach that could synergize with competing approaches. We have strong patent applications on our platform technology, and are pursuing funding for pre-IND work.
Resonantia Diagnostics, Inc. – Alternate
Dallas, Texas
Resonantia is developing a diagnostic platform that addresses the burden of drug resistant infections, 2.8M in the US last year, at the point of care. Their next generation microfluidic point of care diagnostic platform will rapidly identify, ~30 minutes, a pathogen from a clinical specimen, and then determines the pathogen’s antimicrobial susceptibility within 30-45 additional minutes. The platform is based off of two pieces of acoustic technology developed at Sandia National Laboratories.
SageSpectra, Inc.
Houston, Texas
SageSpectra is a low-cost, portable device that accurately measures tissue oxygenation, a key indicator of tissue health, across any patient at risk of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) in <3 minutes. PAD, the narrowing of vessels reducing blood flow to the extremities, affects approximately 19-21 million Americans. Through early detection with SageSpectra’s device, long-term complications such as amputation, heart attack, and stroke and their associated acute care costs can be avoided.
Taurus Vascular
Houston, Texas
Taurus Vascular is a Houston-based medical device company focused on improving long-term outcomes for patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs). We are developing a safe, effective, and easy-to-use, catheter-based, medical device to reduce the risk and impact of endoleaks after endovascular aortic aneurysm repair (EVAR), representing a significant improvement over the current standard of care.
Tremedics Medical Devices, Inc.
North Richland Hills, Texas
Tremedics is a medical device company who manufactures bioresorbable stents for the indication of use for coarctation of the aorta. Tremedics has successfully prototyped an opposing coiled stent, IllusicorTM, that is equivalent to metal stents in radial strength that degrades over a period of time. Tremedics has received Breakthrough Device Designation with the FDA. This will help move this product forward in bench studies and preclinical studies and first in human trials.
Waltech International, Inc.
Austin, Texas
Waltech manufactures smart thermostats for RV living. 99% of 12 million RV owners in the US still use old push-button thermostats and appliances. Due to power differences, regular smart home thermostats like google nest cannot be used in RVs(AC vs. DC). They are the world’s first thermostat to work on AC & DC power and are currently used by more than 300 RV owners and they aim to dominate the industry.
*Alternates on standby if a semi-finalist drops out for any reason, and are eligible for all sponsored and elevator-pitch competition prizes.
