About Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship

Program Overview

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship (Rice Alliance) is one of the leading entrepreneurship programs in the nation. The Rice Alliance is Rice University's flagship initiative devoted to the support of entrepreneurship. 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 the Texas and Houston region.

The Rice Alliance was launched in 1999. Unique among many entrepreneurship centers, the Rice Alliance was formed 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). Rice University is consistently ranked as one of the leading teaching and research universities in the United States. U.S. News & World Reports ranks three Rice graduate programs among the “top 10” in the U.S.: bioengineering, computer science, and physics.

Recent Accolades

In 2007, Rice University and the Jones School were recognized as one of the top 25 best graduate entrepreneurship programs in the U.S. by The Princeton Reviewand Entrepreneur magazine.  That same year, the Rice Alliance was recognized as the Top Entrepreneurship Center in the U.S. for Enterprise Creation by the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers. 

Ernst & Young presented the Rice Alliance with the Entrepreneur of the Year Award for support of entrepreneurship in 2005. 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.

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

Houston, home to Rice University, has also been in the spotlight this year. Kiplinger’s magazine named Houston the #1 City to Live, Work & Play. Forbes ranked Houston in the Top 5 Up & Coming Tech Cities, the #1 City for Recent College Grads, and the #3 City for Young Professionals. Fierce Biotech

placed Houston in the Top 5 Regions for Biotech. Newsweek, Washington Post and ABC News have all recently profiled the strength and diversity of the Houston economy.


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 our first six years.

The Rice Alliance assists companies in several ways, including:

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/strong> 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:

2009 Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) – April 16-18, 2009

The annual Rice University Business Plan Competition is the largest and richest intercollegiate, graduate business plan competition in the world. Competitors receive advice and mentoring and the opportunity to network with potential investors and venture capitalists. Highlights include:

    - 243 teams from around the globe entered the 2008 competition

    - 36 graduate and MBA schools compete – including top-ranked U.S. and international schools

    - 170 judges -- the majority of which are venture capitalists and investors

    - $675,000+ in prizes, including $125,000 investment prize and nearly $400,000 in other cash prizes

    - EVERY team wins cash prizes

Entrepreneurship Education University Courses

Rice University offers nearly 20 courses in entrepreneurship at both the graduate and undergraduate level. Students are able to obtain a concentration in entrepreneurship by taking courses such as:

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, the Rice Alliance initiated a new intensive Life Science Entrepreneurship Certificate Program.

World-class Faculty

Rice University and the Jones School have nearly 20 world-class entrepreneurship faculty members, including Dr. Ed Williams, ranked by Business Week as one of the top three entrepreneurship faculty in the United States. 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. The Jones School faculty also includes several leading venture capitalists and entrepreneurs who lend their first-hand experience, including founders of Vanguard Ventures and DFJ Mercury (an affiliate of Draper Fisher Jurvetson).

For more information visit www.alliance.rice.edu/alliance.

About the Jones School

The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University, one of the world’s best teaching and research universities, offers the Full-Time Rice MBA, MBA for Executives, and MBA for Professionals degrees. The Jones school also offers joint MBA degrees in mechanical engineering and medicine, an undergraduate business minor, and a full schedule of executive education and customized courses for business and industry. In 2008, the Jones School was ranked 40th by U.S. News and World Report and 34th in the U.S. by the Financial Times. The scenic campus is located in Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city and a leading choice of Fortune 500 headquarters. For more about the Rice MBA visit: http://www.jonesgsm.rice.edu/.

About Rice University

From its inception, Rice University has been dedicated to creating unconventional wisdom: preparing outstanding students for diverse careers and lives, contributing to the advancement of learning across a wide range of research and scholarship, and sharing that knowledge and discovery with the world. It is distinguished by its relatively small enrollment (approximately 3,000 undergraduates and 2,100 graduate students), its selectivity (12 applicants for each place in the freshman class), its resources (an undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio of 5-to-1 and the sixth largest endowment per student among U.S. private, research universities), its residential college system (nine existing colleges, with two additional under construction) and its collaborative culture, which crosses disciplines, integrates teaching and research, and intermingles undergraduate and graduate work. At Rice there is a symbiotic relationship between academics, student life and real-world experiences that reaches from the classroom and laboratory to the city of Houston, home to a full array of cultural, athletic and economic opportunities.

Rice was ranked as a top 20 national university in 2007 and again in 2008 by U.S. News & World Report and the No. 1 best value among private colleges in 2008 by the Princeton Review. Its schools of architecture, engineering, business, music, humanities, social sciences and natural sciences are consistently cited for their respective undergraduate and graduate programs. Students also benefit from a variety of institutes and centers, including the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, a nonpartisan organization that has brought a distinctive voice to national policy dialogue. In addition to its prestigious degree programs, the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies at Rice offers the largest selection of noncredit arts and sciences courses in Texas. The school has nearly 10,000 enrollments a year and is well known for its professional development courses.

As a leading research university with a commitment to undergraduate education, Rice aspires to unconventional wisdom in the form of pathbreaking research, unsurpassed teaching and contributions to the betterment of our world.

For more information visit www.rice.edu.