Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship

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The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship is an entrepreneurship program at Rice University in Houston, Texas, United States. [1] The mission of the Rice Alliance is to provide entrepreneurship education and support the commercialization of technology and non-technology innovations and the creation of new companies in Texas, specifically the Houston region.

Rice University university in Houston, Texas, USA

William Marsh Rice University, commonly known as Rice University, is a private research university located on a 300-acre campus in Houston, Texas, United States. The university is situated near the Houston Museum District and is adjacent to the Texas Medical Center.

Houston City in Texas, United States

Houston is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and the fourth most populous city in the United States, with a census-estimated population of 2.312 million in 2017. It is the most populous city in the Southern United States and on the Gulf Coast of the United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the seat of Harris County and the principal city of the Greater Houston metropolitan area, which is the fifth most populous metropolitan statistical area (MSA) in the United States and the second most populous in Texas after the Dallas-Fort Worth MSA. With a total area of 627 square miles (1,620 km2), Houston is the eighth most expansive city in the United States. Though primarily in Harris county, small portions of the city extend into Fort Bend & Montgomery counties.

Texas State of the United States of America

Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Geographically located in the South Central region of the country, Texas shares borders with the U.S. states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the southwest, while the Gulf of Mexico is to the southeast.

Contents

The Rice Alliance was launched in 1999 as a strategic alliance of three schools at Rice University: the George R. Brown School of Engineering, the Wiess School of Natural Sciences, and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management (Jones School).

The George R. Brown School of Engineering is an academic school at Rice University in Houston, Texas. It contains the departments of Bioengineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computational and Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Statistics. Engineering has been part of Rice's curriculum since the university's founding in 1912, but the school was not established as its own unit until 1975.

The Wiess School of Natural Sciences is an academic school at Rice University in Houston, Texas. It comprises the departments of BioSciences ; Chemistry; Earth, Environment and Planetary Sciences; Kinesiology; Mathematics; and Physics and Astronomy. Rice is well known for its groundbreaking research in nanotechnology. As well as undergraduate in instruction, the school also supports a professional science master's program. One of Rice's greatest minds and pioneers of the field was Richard Smalley, the Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Smalley received the Nobel Prize in 1996 for the discovery buckminsterfullerene, an allotrope of carbon commonly referred to as "buckyballs".

Recent history

In 2007, the Rice Alliance was recognized as the Top Entrepreneurship Center in the U.S. for Enterprise Creation by the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers. [1]

Ernst & Young presented the Rice Alliance with the Entrepreneur of the Year Award for support of entrepreneurship in 2005.[ citation needed ]Small Times magazine (nanotechnology trade) ranked Rice University #1 in the U.S. among all universities in 2005 and #3 in 2006 in the commercialization of nanotechnology and creation of start-up technology companies.[ citation needed ]

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In 2004, the Rice Alliance was awarded the Price Institute Innovation Entrepreneurship Educators Award by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program at Stanford University.[ citation needed ]

Outreach & economic development

Since inception in 1999, the Rice Alliance has assisted in the launch of more than 225 start-up technology companies that have raised more than $350 million in early stage funding. The Rice Alliance has conducted over 90 programs attended by over 22,000 individuals during the first six years.

The Rice Alliance assists companies in several ways, including:

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In total, more than 500 early-stage technology companies have been showcased at one of the Rice Alliance Technology Venture Forums. These companies include both Rice-affiliated and non-Rice affiliated ventures. Approximately 25 start-ups licensing Rice-developed technology innovations have been founded in the last eight years. These diverse companies stem from energy technology, life sciences, information technology, and nanotechnology. Four Rice University start-up companies were among the first six companies in Houston to receive grant funding from the Emerging Technology Fund from the state of Texas.

The Rice Alliance’s flagship program to encourage collaboration and networking among students, investors, entrepreneurs, mentors, and service providers is the Technology Venture Forum series. Each year, four venture capital forums are held in the following areas:

Non-credit courses

The Rice Alliance teaches several “non-credit” educational courses each year in technology entrepreneurship. For the last seven years, the Rice Alliance has held a “sold-out” two-day Technology Entrepreneurship Workshop course. This workshop provides a step-by-step approach to successfully launch and build a company.

In Fall 2007, in partnership with the Rice Executive Education program, [2] the Rice Alliance initiated a new intensive Life Science Entrepreneurship Certificate Program.

Faculty

Rice University and the Jones School have nearly 20 entrepreneurship faculty members, including Dr. Ed Williams, ranked by Business Week as one of the top three entrepreneurship faculty in the United States.[ citation needed ] Williams and Dr. Al Napier published the recent book: Preparing an Entrepreneurial Business Plan. Napier received the 2008 national Acton Award for excellence in entrepreneurship education.[ citation needed ] The Jones School faculty also includes several venture capitalists and entrepreneurs including founders of Vanguard Ventures and DFJ Mercury (an affiliate of Draper Fisher Jurvetson).[ citation needed ]

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References

  1. 1 2 "GCEC: Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers". Archived from the original on 2008-09-05. Retrieved 2008-08-29.
  2. ↑ "Executive Education Courses". Rice University. Archived from the original on 2008-09-15. Retrieved 2008-08-29.
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