Institute Management
Dr. Joseph C. Picken
Executive Director
Clinical Professor: Entrepreneurship MBA Program, UTD School of Management
Dr. Joseph Picken has been a member of the faculty of the School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas since 2001. He serves as the executive director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UT Dallas and teaches graduate courses in entrepreneurship, leadership, strategic management and organizational behavior. Over the past six years, Picken and his colleagues have built a leading academic program in innovation and entrepreneurship with more than 750 students currently enrolled in 14 graduate and undergraduate courses.
Picken holds an A.B. in Economics from Dartmouth College, an MBA in Finance and Accounting from the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth, and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Texas at Arlington. He is a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma academic honorary society. From 1997-2000, he was a visiting assistant professor and senior lecturer in organizational behavior/business policy at the Edwin L. Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. From 1995-1997, Dr. Picken taught in the MBA program at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is the author with Gregory Dess of two books, Mission Critical: The Seven Strategic Traps that Derail Even the Smartest Companies (Irwin/McGraw Hill, 1997) and Beyond Productivity: How Leading Companies Achieve Superior Performance by Leveraging Their Human Capital (AMACOM Books, 1999). He has published numerous articles in trade and professional journals.
Picken's business and consulting career spans more than 30 years. He has served as CFO of major operating units of several Fortune 500 corporations, held CEO or COO positions in two NASDAQ companies and has been involved in two initial public offerings and several successful turnarounds. His industry experience includes electronics and heavy equipment manufacturing, transportation, aviation services, equipment leasing, computer hardware/software and government contracting.
He has also headed his own management consulting firm since 1986. Joseph C. Picken and Associates provides strategy, marketing, operations management and turnaround management consulting services to firms across a broad range of manufacturing and service industries. The firm focuses primarily on the unique challenges of emerging growth firms in high technology industries. Over the past 21 years, the firm has successfully completed more than 80 consulting engagements for more than 60 clients.
Robert L. Robb
Associate Vice President for Technology Commercialization
Director, Venture Development
Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UT Dallas
Clinical Professor: Entrepreneurship MBA Program, UTD School of Management
Robert L. Robb is the Associate Vice President for Technology Commercialization at UT Dallas, Director of Venture Development for The Institute of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at UTD (IIE) and a Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship in the School of Management at the University of Texas at Dallas. Mr. Robb heads the new Office of Technology Commercialization and leads the “virtual incubation” initiative at UTD and is an investor in or advisor to several early stage enterprises. Mr. Robb’s perspective of new venture development is that of entrepreneur, venture investor and institutional venture developer with over 27 years experience in creating, managing and advising emerging enterprises. He has funded, founded, nurtured and/or managed 24 early stage companies and served as CEO of 7 emerging enterprises. Seven of the 24 companies Mr. Robb assisted or managed have established a combined market capitalization in excess of $1.3 billion with several of these enterprises being acquired by larger firms. He has coached entrepreneurs and advised early stage companies in all facets of creating and managing new ventures and has raised more than $80 million for start-up and early stage companies.
Mr. Robb’s experience includes 6 years as a venture investor with two, seed-stage, venture capital firms, including a public venture fund, which he founded. Also, he served as Director of the Technology Management Office at the University of Michigan with responsibility to reorganize and rebrand the TMO and proactively commercialize Michigan’s innovations through the creation of new ventures. Additionally, Mr. Robb served as Executive Director of Venture Development for BCM Technologies, Inc., the technology commercialization arm of Baylor College of Medicine, where he facilitated the launch of new enterprises founded on BCM’s new inventions.
He currently serves as an advisor or consultant to several early stage companies, including, Aqua-Synergy, Catawater Enterprises, BioSig ID, MicroTransponder, Solarno, Pungo, Inc., and North Texas Enterprise Center, a business accelerator.
Mr. Robb received a B.S. in Environmental Biology and a M.S. in Parasitology/Microbiology from the University of Utah.
Jackie Kimzey
Associate Director
Jackie Kimzey joined Sevin Rosen Funds in 1999 after nearly 20 years as an executive at wireless carrier and service provider companies. He brings akeen understanding of what it takes for a promising venture to evolve into a successful business and company. He has held management positions at the semiconductor manufacturer Mostek and was also co-founder and CEO of wireless provider ProNet. He helped develop proprietary products, generated "turn-around" strategies, recruited top executives, and played both key roles in mergers and acquisitions. At SRF, Jackie applies his experience and entrepreneurial perspective to young companies in the wireless and software arena, including airBand, GlobeRanger, Inner Wireless, Itzbig, MetroFi, Verified Person and Wayport.
Madison Pedigo
Associate Director, Academic Program
Madison is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management at UTD, where he teaches Entrepreneurship and Finance courses. Madison is a founding member of the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Advisory Board, and the Faculty Advisor for the UTD Entrepreneurship Club.
Prior to joining UTD in June 2009, Madison was the Manager of TI’s Venture Capital Program, where he led investments in multiple private companies and venture capital funds. He was also a key player in TI strategic analyses and coordinated the acquisition of multiple strategic companies. Prior to joining TI’s M&A team in early 1994, Madison held financial management positions in TI’s businesses and corporate staff.
Madison formerly served as a member of the State’s Emerging Technology Fund Advisory Committee. He was also an advisor to the UT System regarding the formation of the Texas Ignition Fund in 2007.
Madison has a degree in Biochemistry and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin, and he is licensed as a CPA in the State of Texas.
Eric T. Farrar, MFA
Executive Committee
Eric Farrar is an Assistant Professor of 3D Computer Animation in Arts and Technology (ATEC). He graduated from Ohio University with a music performance degree and spent the better part of a decade working as a freelance drummer and percussionist in the central Ohio area, all the while working at a variety of computer - related "day jobs." In the late 1990s, Eric returned to school to study graphic design where he discovered 3D computer animation. He immediately fell in love with the medium as a means for combining his appreciation for visual art with his background in music. He completed an MFA in Computer Animation and Visualization working through the Advanced Computing Center for Art and Design (ACCAD) at The Ohio State University. Eric then went to work for the Los Angeles based visual-effects studio, Rhythm & Hues. There he worked as a character rigger creating bone and muscle systems for digital characters helping to bring a variety of computer generated animals and fantasy characters to life. Films on which he worked include Night and the Museum and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe.
Eric is currently teaching courses in 3D animation including two new courses focused on character rigging, which introduce students to some of the more technical elements of preparing 3D models for animation. His creative and research interests center around independent animated shorts and techniques for combining music and animation.
Donald A. Hicks Ph.D.
Executive Committee
Dr. Donald A. Hicks is a professor of political economy and public policy in UT Dallas' School of Economic, Social and Political Sciences. He also serves as special assistant to UT Dallas President Dr. David E. Daniel. His research and consulting activities have been focused on technology innovation and processes of emerging technologies and industries. Current research includes studies on prospects for anticipating demand for ultra-precision nano-scale production; designer materials and toolsets; the role of venture capital investment in regional/industrial transformation; value creation in bioscience commercialization; the role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in healthcare service transformation; and time-to-market competitive pressures on product innovation and industry change. Hicks joined the UT Dallas faculty in 1975.
Rafael Martin
Executive Committee
Rafael Martin is the Associate Vice President for Research in UT Dallas' Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. He has responsibilities across the range of university research processes. On the front end, he assists researchers with non-disclosure and other agreements that facilitate building relationships with potential corporate sponsors. Once a mutual research interest is identified, he negotiates the contracts which formalize the relationship between the university and sponsor. On the tail end of the process, Martin receives intellectual property disclosures from researchers and shepherds them through the university's evaluation and protection process. He then works to find licensing partners or investors for university owned technologies.
Born and raised in Dallas, Martin received a B.A. in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduation, he took a job as a consultant with McKinsey & Company working in the Dallas and Toronto offices. After three years as a consultant, he decided to switch careers and became a paramedic, eventually becoming a field training officer for Durham County EMS in Durham, N.C. While working as a paramedic, Martin received a M.S. in Environmental Management from Duke University and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a graduate student, he worked for The Home Depot in Atlanta and Ford Motor Company in Chennai, India. In 2003, Martin joined UT Dallas as the university's manager for technology transfer, eventually becoming director of the Office of Research Administration. In 2005, he did business development and operations consulting work for Jonathan Bailey Associates, an architecture firm serving the healthcare and education sectors. A few months later, he returned to UT Dallas to his current position.
Mario A. Rotea, Ph.D.
Executive Committee
Dr. Rotea is the head of the Mechanical Engineering Department at UTD. He began his academic career at Purdue University, where he was a professor of aeronautics and astronautics for 17 years. From 2007-2009, he was a Professor and head of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and he managed the Control Systems program at the National Science Foundation from 2005-2007. Dr. Rotea has made pioneering contributions in control systems with more than 100 archival and conference publications. He received an NSF Young Investigator Award in 1993 and is a Fellow of the IEEE. His current research focus is on control systems to improve the reliability of wind turbines, and storage systems to increase wind energy penetration.
Rajiv Shah, Ph.D.
Executive Committee
Dr. Rajiv Shah joined the faculty of the School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas in 2008 as Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Strategy and Technology Management.
Dr. Shah holds a B.Sc. in physics, mathematics and statistics from the University of Pune, in India, an MS and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Rice University, and an Executive MBA from Southern Methodist University. He has also served on the faculty of the California Institute of Technology as the Dr. Chaim Weizmann Post Doctoral Research Fellow. Over the past several
years, he has served on the Industrial Advisory Boards for UT Dallas and Southern Methodist University and as a member of the Engineering Executive Board at SMU since 2002.
Dr. Shah is a founder and Managing Partner of Timmaron Capital Advisors, LLC, a firm providing
strategic advisory services to CEOs, boards of directors and private equity firms, and the principal of The indusLotus Group, LLC, a business strategy and technology consulting firm he founded in 2005. In these capacities, he has served as an advisor to Cerberus Capital Management, LP, Commscope, Inc., Ericsson, Inc., Goldman Sachs Vantage Marketplace LLC, Nomura Securities, Silver Lake Partners, Columbus Hill Capital Management, McKinsey & Co. and others.
Since 2005, Dr. Shah has been a mentor for STARTech Early Ventures and has served as an evaluator and mentor for the North Texas Regional Center for Innovation and ommercialization. He serves on the advisory boards of a number of startup companies.
Prior to founding The indusLotus Group, Dr. Shah served as CTO and VP of Research and Network Strategy for Alcatel North America, a $2B subsidiary of Paris-based Alcatel, Inc. Prior to joining Alcatel, he held senior management positions at MCI Worldcom and was employed by Texas Instruments for seventeen years in various capacities, including research and development, manufacturing, business development and strategy.
DJ Yang, Ph.D.
Executive Committee
Before joining UT Dallas as Associate Dean in UT Dallas' School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in 2003, Dr. DJ Yang was in charge of leading nano-bio business development at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) as an executive vice president.
SAIT is the central research and development organization in Samsung Electronics. Between 1997-99, he was the head of the chemical sector and vice president at the institute, and in 2000, he was promoted to executive vice president. Prior to working at Samsung, Yang worked at Dupont-U.S.A. and Dupont-Korea, holding various positions such as researcher, group leader, project manager and research and development, managing director.
While at Dupont, he received various experiences through working in the several positions in research and development, manufacturing, supply chain, project/product management and sales/marketing at Polymer Intermediates Dept., Finishes/Fabricated Products Dept., Automotive Products SBU and Electronics Materials SBU. He was an Adjunct Professor at the Center for Surface Science and Engineering at the University of Missouri-Columbia between 1989-93. He was also a founding member of the Delaware Korean School and served as managing principle.
