1912 September 23 Edgar O. Lovett gives first matriculation address, officially opening the Rice Institute
1912 Mechanical Engineering lab completed
1913 Lovett’s outreach involves engineering faculty giving talks to public groups
1914 Students form Engineering Society
1916 First engineering degrees awarded: six in chemical, electrical and civil. Institute awards total of 35 BS degrees
1916 All engineering majors required to work in the engineering test lab as part of curriculum
1917 First master’s degree in engineering awarded (Chemical Engineering)
1920 First Rice Engineering show held, drawing 10,000 visitors. Some later shows reportedly draw up to 48,000
1929 First woman engineering graduate (Chemical Engineering)
1933 Rice Engineering Alumni group formed, Rice’s oldest alumni special interest group
1933 Tau Beta Pi chapter formed
1941 Chemical Engineering is first chemical engineering department in Texas to earn accreditation
1948 Abercrombie Engineering Lab completed
1950s - 1980s
1957 Chemical Engineering installs nuclear reactor at cost of $150,000 ($1.3 million today)
1958 First computer on campus, Litton LGP-30 becomes operational
1959 First engineering doctorate awarded (Chemical Engineering)
1959 Parts of the R1, Rice Institute Computer begin functioning. The computer is fully operational in 1961
1959 LeVan Griffis named Dean of Engineering
1960 The Rice Institute was formally redesignated William Marsh Rice University
Sixty engineers attend a chemical engineering continuing education class in the first Rice summer engineering session
1961 In Rice stadium address, John F. Kennedy commits to U.S. landing men on the moon by 1970
1961 Franz R. Brotzen named Dean of Engineering
1961 Materials Science receives accreditation and new department is named Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
1961 Professor L.B. Ryon gives $750,000 estate to Rice for civil engineering lab (($6 million today)
1964 The Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, directed by W.W. Akers, is established
1965 Ryon Engineering Lab completed
1965 Rice, Texas Medical Center researchers develop first artificial heart
1967 William E. Gordon becomes first dean of both science and engineering
1968 Department of Environmental Science and Engineering established
1968 William E. Gordon elected to National Academy of Sciences
1968 Brown Foundation awards $4 million to School of Engineering ($27.7 million today)
1969 Academic side of digital signal processing (DSP) born at Rice University
1969 Rice-Baylor project results in the first implantation of artificial heart
1970 Precursor to CAAM, Mathematical Sciences, established
1971 Mary Wheeler ’71 becomes first female instructor in engineering at Rice
1975 Science-Engineering division divided into George R. Brown School of Engineering and School of Natural Sciences (five engineering departments)
1975 William E. Gordon elected to the National Academy of Engineering
1975 Alan J. Chapman named Dean of Engineering
1978 Rice Engineering Design and Development Institute opens
1979 Anestis S. Veletsos elected to National Academy of Engineering
1980 J. David Hellums named Dean of Engineering
1984 Mechanical Engineering building opens, completing the Engineering Quad
1984 Departments of mathematical science and computer science incorporated into School of Engineering
1985 45°, 90°, 180° sculptures installed in Engineering Quad
1986 Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering (IBB) formed to foster cross-disciplinary research and education programs encompassing the biological, chemical and engineering disciplines
1986 Computer and Information Technology Institute founded to foster interdisciplinary research in information technology, computational science and engineering, and high-performance computing
1987 Statistics Department formed from the Mathematical Sciences Department
1987 Michael M. Carroll elected to National Academy of Engineering
1988 Michael M. Carroll named Dean of Engineering
1988 Engineering students pull off the jack of the century, turning the one-ton statue of William Marsh Rice in the Academic Quad 180°
1989 The Center for Research on Parallel Computation established to make massively parallel computing systems as usable as conventional supercomputing
1989 Ronald P. Nordgren elected to National Academy of Engineering
1990s - 2000
1990 Statistics Department becomes part of the School of Engineering
1990 Ken Kennedy elected to National Academy of Engineering
1991 Mathematical Sciences becomes Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics
1991 G. Anthony Gorry elected to National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine
1992 Richard A. Tapia elected to National Academy of Engineering
1994 Angelo Miele elected to National Academy of Engineering
1995 Riki Kobayashi elected to National Academy of Engineering
1996 Duncan Hall dedicated, housing Computer Science, Computational and Applied Mathematics, Statistics and part of Electrical and Computer Engineering
1997 Robert E. Bixby elected to National Academy of Engineering
1998 Dell Butcher Hall dedicated as the new home of the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, housing members of the chemistry, physics and electrical and computer engineering departments
1998 Rice undergraduates win 27 Nationals Science Foundation Fellowships, placing Rice first in the nation
1998 Rice creates Department of Bioengineering with 7 faculty and 20 undergraduate students
1998 C. Sidney Burrus named Dean of Engineering
1998 J. David Hellums elected to National Academy of Engineering
1999 Center for Cellular and Tissue Engineering founded
2001 - present
2001 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering created, bringing together the departments of civil engineering and environmental science and engineering
2001 Gulf Coast Consortia is founded, bringing together six member institutions to build interdisciplinary collaborative research teams and training programs
2002 NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, adjunct professor in mechanical engineering and materials science, and other astronauts perform spacewalks to service Hubble Space Telescope
2002 Moshe Y. Vardi elected to National Academy of Engineering
2004 Rice becomes a member of the Texas Medical Center
2005 Sallie Keller-McNulty named Dean of Engineering
2005 Pol Spanos elected to National Academy of Engineering
2006 William Sick family endows engineering dean chair
2007 Rice announces plans to build 10-story, 477,000-square-foot Collaborative Research Center as a home for joint research programs with TMC institutions
2008 Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen dedicated in former Central Kitchen
2008 Rebecca Richards-Kortum elected to National Academy of Engineering
2008 John ’73, ’74 and Ann Doerr ’75 donate $15 million through their Beneficus Foundation to establish an engineering leadership center
2009 BioScience Research Collaborative completed and Bioengineering Department moves in
2009 Rice Center for Engineering Leadership established
2009 Edwin L. Thomas elected to National Academy of Engineering and American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2009 Naomi J. Halas elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2010 Moshe Y. Vardi elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2011 Edwin L. Thomas named William and Stephanie Sick Dean of Engineering
2011 Richard A. Tapia receives National Medal of Science
2011 Herbert Levine elected to National Academy of Science
2012 Antonios G. Mikos elected to National Academy of Engineering
2012 Lydia A. Kavraki and Antonios G. Mikos elected to National Academy of Medicine
2012 Herbert Levine elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2013 Richard A. Tapia elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2013 Naomi J. Halas elected to National Academy of Sciences
2013 Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science made into two departments — Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and NanoEngineering
2014 Naomi J. Halas elected to National Academy of Engineering
2014 Pol D. Spanos elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2014 Rice Center for Engineering Leadership begins awarding Certificate in Engineering Leadership, the first of its kind in Texas and one of a handful in the U.S.
2015 Moshe Y. Vardi elected to National Academy of Sciences
2015 Titan Themis Scanning/transmission electron microscope, one of the most powerful in the U.S., comes online
2016 Rebecca Richards-Kortum receives MacArthur Award
2017 Reginald DesRoches named William and Stephanie Sick Dean of Engineering
2017 Richard Baraniuk elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2018 Pedro Alvarez elected to the National Academy of Engineering
2018 Center for Transforming Data to Knowledge (D2K Lab) launches
2018 Rice Neuroengineering Initiative is launched
2019 Vision to 2025: Strategic Plan for the George R. Brown School of Engineering is unveiled
2019 Master of Computer Science Online Program begins the first Rice online engineering program
2020 Welch Foundation donates $100 million to establish The Welch Institute at Rice
2020 Gene Frantz elected to the National Academy of Engineering
2020 Reginald DesRoches elected to the National Academy of Engineering
2021 Luay Nakhleh named William and Stephanie Sick Dean of Engineering
2021 Abercrombie Lab is demolished to make way for construction on a new engineering and science building
2021 Maxfield Hall is dedicated
2021 Former Dean Reginald DesRoches announced as next president of Rice
2022 Richard Baraniuk elected to the National Academy of Engineering
