Join us in celebrating some of the startups from Rice Alliance programs as they reached exciting milestones in 2022! If you want your highlights featured throughout the year, please reach out to us: alliance@rice.edu! 

2022 Featured Highlights

(Featured in our 2022 Year-in-Review email digest!) 

• Medical Informatics, OwlSpark Class 1, 2020 RBPC and 2014 TLSF, raises $27M in Series B funding.
   
• Syzygy Plasmonics, Rice spinout, Rice Alliance IdeaLaunch participant and 2019 ETVF Most Promising, raises $76 million in latest funding round.
   
• Lilac, 2019 ETVF Most Promising and 2017 RBPC startup, awarded $50 Million by U.S. Department of Energy. 
   
• LiNa Energy, Class 2 Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator startup, closes £3M late seed funding round.
   
• Quino Energy, Clean Energy Accelerator Class 2 startup, closes its $3.3M seed funding round, on top of the $4.6M from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). 
   
• Iconic Air, 2020 RBPC startup and Energy Tech Venture Forum Presenter, raises $5M in seed funding.
   
• Class 2 OwlSpark Startup and ETVF Participant, EnPower (formerly Big Delta Systems), opens new 92,000-square-foot production facility in Indianapolis.
   
• Hoth Intelligence, 2022 RBPC 2nd Place startup, receives additional funding from RBPC prize sponsors including, the Houston Angel Network,  The OWLs and TiE Texas.
   
• Kanin Energy, Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator Class 1, enters agreement with Tallgrass to develop waste heat to power projects. 
   
• Criterion Energy Partners, Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator Class 1 and IdeaLaunch participant, secures strategic investment from Patterson-UTI Energy. 
   
• 2022 RBPC semi-finalist, Mallard Bay, closes its $1.8 million funding round.
   
• Mantel, 2022 RBPC Competitor, closes $2M round. Plus, New Climate Ventures increased their $25K investment prize after RBPC.
   
• Nanopath, the 2020 RBPC 2nd Place Startup, raises a $10M Series A funding. 
   
• Ictero Medical, a Houston medical device startup and "Most Promising Company" at the 2020 Texas Life Science Forum, closes $6M series A
   
• Revterra, 2021 Venture Day at CERAWeek Most Promising and ETVF participant, announces $6M Series A financing.
   
• Ai-Ris, OwlSpark Startup Accelerator Class 8 and 2021 RBPC Competitor, granted a utility patent on their retinal imaging system.
   
• Topl, OwlSpark Startup Accelerator Class 4, raises $15M in Series A funding.
   
• MicroTransponder, 2008 RBPC Finalist and 2009 Texas Life Science Forum Most Promising, raises a $53M Series E. 
   
• Lidrotec, 2022 RBPC Grand Prize Winner, raised $5M in funding, led by GOOSE Capital who increased their investment after the competition.

Additional Highlights: 

• Alison Burklund, co-founder and CTO of Nanopath, RBPC 2020 2nd place overall winner and Cameron Halliday and Danielle Colson, Co-Founders of Mantel, 2022 RBPC startup, highlighted on 2023 Forbes Under Thirty list. 
   
• KLAW founders, 2022 RBPC startup, awarded $500,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to expand their operations in Binghamton and develop tech.
   
• Vitls, Texas Life Science Forum participant and a Houston-based vital signs monitoring technology and platform, raises $1.3M of venture funding
   
• Class 2 Clean Energy Accelerator startup, Nobel Works, signs a strategic agreement with R3 Aerospace. 
   
• RBPC Startup, Modvion, produces the first module for their full-scale wood commercial wind turbine tower.
   
• Arolytics, Class 1 Clean Energy Accelerator startup, named a "Rising Star" at the SPE ATCE Startup Village Energy Startup Competition.
   
• 2021 RBPC startup, LiRA, receives an NSF SBIR Phase I $250k grant in the category of Augmented and Virtual Reality: Human-Computer Interaction.
   
• Eden GeoPower, Class 2 Clean Energy Accelerator startup, secures a pilot with Petroleum Development Oman. 
   
• Criterion Energy Partners, Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator Class 1, secures partnership with Chesapeake to launch a test well.
   
• Aurign, 2020 RBPC Grand Prize Winner, accepted into Class 17 of the RevTech Labs Accelerator.
   
• Criterion Energy Partners, Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator Class 1, secures 10,000-acre geothermal lease in Texas. 
   
• EarthEn, 2022 RBPC startup from Arizona State University and 2022 Energy Venture Day presenter, wins the 2022 SCG Bangkok Business Challenge @ Sasin 2022 – Global Competition
   
• Algeon Materials, 2022 RBPC semi-finalist from UC San Diego, wins 1st Place in the Triton Challenge
   
• Baked Bones, BlueLaunch Class 1, wins the Houston Chronicle “best of the best” in CBD and pet store categories 
   
• OYA CEO, 2021 RBPC startup, named as finalist for 2022 RevolutionHer Award
   
• Ai-Ris, OwlSpark Startup Accelerator Class 8 and RBPC '21, becomes a Capital Factory portfolio company
   
• OYA Femtech Apparel, RBPC '21 Finalist, completes the Techstars Sports Accelerator in Indianapolis

The grant will support the commercialization of their novel, patented, method for removing PFAS contaminants from water supplies. 

Congratulations to Dr. Michael Wong, Bo Wang, Dr. Kimberly Heck, and Francois M. Auzerais, Ph.D., for their work on Aqualight Materials, a novel, patented, method for removing PFAS contaminants from water supplies. PFAS contaminants are widespread due to their previous use in lubricants, surfactants, and fire-fighting foams—and can cause liver damage, cancer, developmental and reproductive damage at very low levels.

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Led on campus by Rice Alliance, Rice University is a founding partner of the Southwest NSF I-Corps™ Node, established in 2014 by Rice University, Texas A&M and UT Austin. Kerri Smith, Associate Managing Director of the Rice Alliance leads the program, along with Kaz Karwowski, Executive Director, RCEL, to provide coaching and mentoring through the NSF I-Corps grant process. The NSF I-Corps program helps commercialize university technologies and uses experiential education to help researchers gain insight into entrepreneurship, starting a business, and customer needs.  

Through the work of many faculty and researchers at Rice, along with the coordination and mentorship of the Rice Alliance and Rice Center for Engineering Leadership, Rice University has received more than $650,000 in grant funding for Rice NSF I-Corps Teams, supporting the commercialization of Rice technologies and experiential education of PhD students.  

These successful Rice I-Corps teams include Volumetric, led by Dr. Jordan Miller, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, that went through the program. Volumetric was acquired for up to $400 million in late 2021. More recently, EpiFresh, the Rice startup that competed in the 2022 Rice Business Plan Competition, led by Neethu Pottackal, Rice PhD Candidate in Materials Science and NanoEngineering, completed the NSF I-Corps program in 2021.