UT-Dallas dials Nichols for innovation role

University of Texas at Dallas (UT-Dallas) has filled the role of executive director at its Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship by promoting Paul Nichols (pictured), its assistant director, into the position.
Nichols succeeds Steve Guengerich, who has stood down having held the post since August 2017. His objective will be to spawn businesses which exploit cross-disciplinary UT-Dallas innovations.
Tasks on Nichols’ near-term itinerary include increasing levels of available interdisciplinary programming at the institute and ensuring students possess well-rounded skills to help them succeed with their plans post-graduation.
He said he would like to see UT-Dallas’s interdisciplinary remit taken even further by going beyond core business and technology development skills to provide soft-skills such as public speaking that risk being overlooked when bringing new companies to market.
Nichols also urged the university to seek to provide a crucial venture funding lift to early-stage businesses within the North Texas tech ecosystem.
He added: “Dallas/Fort Worth, depending on how you measure it, is one of the top five or four metroplexes in the country, and we have as many tech workers as San Jose, but we are woefully behind in terms of dollars for early-stage technology growth.”
Nichols joined the UT-Dallas Naveen Jindal School of Management in January 2018 as a professor specialised in entrepreneurship and innovation, having previously co-founded Cirasys, an electronics manufacturing spinout of the university, in 2010.
He was tri-chair on the innovation technology committee at regional tech forum Tech Titans from 2007 until 2015, and was director for engineering technology at Silicon Valley Expert Witness Group, a provider of technical experts and consultancy services for intellectual property cases, between 2004 and 2009.
– Image of Paul Nichols courtesy of LinkedIn