Currall named first holder of Sick chair

Currall named first holder of Sick chair
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BY MAILEEN HAMTO
Special to the Rice News

Creating a widely
used, commercially successful product or service requires
a combination of technical inventiveness and business know-how.

The William
and Stephanie Sick Chair in Entrepreneurship at Rice’s
George R. Brown School of Engineering is intended to facilitate
collaboration between the School of Engineering, with its
inventions and technology advances, and the Jesse H. Jones
Graduate School of Management, with its expertise in the
commercialization of ideas.

Steve Currall,
associate professor of management, psychology and statistics
at the Jones School and founding director of the Rice Alliance
for Technology and Entrepreneurship, has been appointed
the first holder of the chair.

Currall also
holds faculty appointments in the department of statistics
in the George R. Brown School of Engineering and in psychology
in the School of Social Sciences. Currall’s appointment
is the first time a professor from the Jones School has
been named the holder of a chair in the Brown School of
Engineering.

“Steve
Currall is the ideal person to occupy the chair,” said
William Sick ’57, a member of the Rice Board of Trustees
who funded the chair with his wife, Stephanie. “In
addition to his clearly demonstrated ability to work effectively
across organizational boundaries, Steve has created one
of the most successful university centers for entrepreneurship
in the country, the Rice Alliance.”

Through hallmark
events such as Technology Concept Forums, the annual Business
Plan Presentation Forum and the Southwest Business Plan
Competition, the Alliance brings together students, faculty,
alumni and others from the Rice community as collaborators,
mentors and investors in engineering, science, software
or digital economy innovations.

“The Rice
Alliance, under the leadership of Steve Currall, has succeeded
in creating a vigorous environment of entrepreneurship at
Rice — a culture in which science and engineering faculty
look beyond the academic realm to consider the potential
commercial applications of their work,” said Sidney
Burrus, dean of the School of Engineering. “Through
their generous contribution, Bill and Stephanie Sick are
helping solidify Rice’s reputation as a university
that fosters the entrepreneurial spirit in both faculty
and students.”

Gil Whitaker,
dean of the Jones School, added, “The Alliance is the
embodiment of the bold and vibrant entrepreneurial spirit
at Rice, and establishment of the chair recognizes the hard
work of Steve Currall and the Rice Alliance staff, who have
done a wonderful job at promoting this spirit of entrepreneurship
throughout the university.”

Currall said
that he is “truly honored to have been named first
holder of this chair, which underscores Rice’s commitment
to technology entrepreneurship and reinforces and deepens
the collaboration among the academic units of the university.”

He explained
that the Alliance began as a vision for elevating Rice to
a leadership role in facilitating commercialization of new
innovations. Although only in its third year, the Rice Alliance
has helped establish more than 90 startup ventures in Houston.

“The Alliance
is the university’s initiative to ensure that Rice
is to Houston what Stanford has been to Silicon Valley and
what MIT has been to Boston,” Currall said.

Sick commented
that he and his wife “funded this academic chair to
provide resources and collaborative opportunities among
Rice’s technical innovators, faculty, students and
alumni, as well as Houston-area entrepreneurs, investors
and business leaders. We hope the chair will facilitate
the commercialization of technological innovations and be
a focal point in creating a body of knowledge to better
educate students in the process of turning ideas into successful
commercial ventures.”

— Maileen
Hamto is the assistant director of public relations at the
Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management.