Timeline
1912 - 1940s
- 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 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 Acadmey 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 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 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 Rice establishes Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory
- 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