Rawand Rasheed, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Houston-based Helix Earth, has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Energy and Green Tech 2025 List. The Forbes list recognizes the most impactful entrepreneurs and game-changers under the age of 30 in North America.
The Energy & Green Tech category recognizes high-energy young entrepreneurs innovating new methods to unlock a cleaner, greener future. The expert judges for the 2025 list were Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of EDP Renewables North America; Alfredo Marti, cofounder and partner at Sandbrook Capital; and Troy Demmer, a former 30 Under 30 honoree and the chief product officer of Gecko Robotics.
Rasheed earned his PhD from Rice University and co-invented the core technology while at NASA, first as a graduate research fellow and then as a Life Support Systems Engineer. He is a named inventor on the patent application for the Helix MICRA™ filter and belongs to Rice University’s inaugural cohort of innovation fellows, where he has trained in business and entrepreneurship. Rasheed holds several patents.
Earlier this year, Rasheed was named to the 2024 Top 40 Under 40 HVACR Professionals List by ACHR News. He also received the 2024 Future Solutions Prize at the Urban Future Prize Competition, was among the three winners of the Fall 2024 EPIC Startup Pitch Competition hosted by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Technology Transitions (OTT), and won the Conservative Energy Network Prize at the Clean Tech Pitch Contest.
Helix Earth Technologies, Inc., (Helix Earth), is a Houston-based hardware company at the forefront of clean tech solutions. Spun out of Rice University and incubated at Greentown Labs in Houston since 2022, the company leveraged technology co-developed for NASA by Rasheed, to create groundbreaking hardware technology designed to disrupt a significant portion of the commercial air conditioning market, an industry that is ready for innovation. This cost-effective, commercial air conditioner add-on technology, now in pilot phase, will produce drier air to save up to 50% of the net energy used in commercial air conditioning, a significant impact on both emissions and operating costs. The company has already garnered industry attention and recognition for its transformative approach to accelerating liquid-gas chemical processes. In addition to its commercial air conditioning solution, the company is innovating solutions for commercial humidity control and carbon capture. Last month, the company successfully closed its oversubscribed $5.6 million seed funding. The company has also secured grant funding from the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy.
Forbes 30 Under 30 List annually recognizes 600 honorees in 20 categories. 2025 honorees were selected from more than 10,000 nominations by Forbes staff and a panel of independent, expert judges, based on a variety of factors, including (but not limited to) funding, revenue, social impact, scale, inventiveness, and potential.
For more information about Helix Earth, its people, and its innovative hardware solutions, please visit www.helixearth.com.
