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 Office of Technology Commercialization and leads the "virtual incubation" initiative at UTD and is an 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.
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 Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Biology and a Master of Science Degree in Parasitology/Microbiology from the University of Utah.
Ms. Stoughton holds an MBA from UT-Dallas with concentrations in Finance and Entrepreneurship, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. She joined the Office of Technology Commercialization at its inception in April 2008, and helped to develop the capabilities of the office.
In addition to technology transfer, she has experience in supply chain management, business development and business intelligence in the telecommunications industry, as well as engineering management and systems engineering in the defense industry. She has also founded or been CEO of several internet and publishing businesses. Ms. Stoughton is Assistant Vice President of Strategic Alliances for the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), has served on the board of TeXchange (a Texas-based organization for technology entrepreneurs) for several years, and is a member of the Licensing Executives Society (LES), North Texas Angel Network, and Beta Gamma Sigma (an honor society for business students).
Thomas L. Muir is the Director of the Venture Development Center at UT Dallas. Mr. Muir holds a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Utah, and an MBA from Texas Woman’s University. He worked for over 20 years as Treasurer and Controller of United Television, Inc., a publicly traded television broadcasting company, with annual revenue of $325 million. In that role Mr. Muir, managed an investment portfolio worth over $250 million, tightened internal and operating controls, developed forecasting systems for revenue, cash flow, and earnings, managed internal and external financial reporting, including SEC filings, managed employee benefits, and prepared all corporate tax returns.
He negotiated a $75 million revolving credit facility, and co-led a $60 million public subordinated debt offering. Mr. Muir performed due diligence and implementation of financial systems for acquisitions and mergers ranging from $23 million to $5.3 billion. For the past 10 years, Mr. Muir has held various financial positions, including CFO, in a variety of industries, including healthcare insurance, distribution, food service, mortgage banking, real estate development, and public accounting. As an entrepreneur at heart, Mr. Muir enjoys managing the Venture Development Center and nurturing the commercialization of new technologies developed at UT Dallas.
Mr. Schultze graduated cum laude with a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University and in May, 2008, he received his MBA with a concentration in Entrepreneurship from UT-Dallas. He was project manager for a million-dollar process development program at a large semiconductor company and has experience with product development, prototyping, and manufacturing processes. Recent projects include the development of a marketing plan for a trucking security startup and a market analysis of a cutting-edge photonics technology.
Anne Isaac holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the Medical College of Wisconsin, where her field of study was characterizing the molecular interactions between a mammalian transcriptional repressor protein and nuclear viral DNA. She continued on to do her post-doctoral research at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
She has several years of experience within the UT system performing evaluations of technologies from diverse disciplines and making patentability recommendations. In her current role as Technology Commercialization Manager she is responsible for securing patent protection and for the commercialization of a portfolio of technologies developed at the University.
