Robert (Bob) R. Maxfield

Co-founder of ROLM Corporation, Maxfield served as its Executive Vice-President and Director. ROLM (named after the initials of the last names of its founders) was co-founded with three other Rice graduates — Gene Richeson '62, Ken Oshman '62, and Walter Loewenstern '59 — and started operation on June 1, 1969 in Santa Clara, California. The company, which originally made flight computers for the military and heavy commercial industries, was purchased by IBM in 1984.

Born about three months before Pearl Harbor in Detroit, Michigan, he grew up in Wichita Falls, Texas, the son of an orthopedic surgeon. Maxfield graduated from public high school in 1959 and then went to Rice University for his undergraduate studies. He received his B.A. (magna cum laude, 1963) and B.S. (1964) in Electrical Engineering from Rice University. He worked for IBM as a computer systems engineer from 1964 to 1966, after which he received his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1966 and 1969, respectively.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, he has served as Director to Software Publishing Corporation (1980–1994), Saratoga National Bank (1982–1986), Vadis Corporation (1989–1991), Knowledge Revolution (1992–1998), and Fogdog Sports (1996–2000). Maxfield has also been a venture partner with Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers (1989–1992). He served as a consulting Professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University from 1988 to 2007.

He has served on the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute from 1992, and as President of the Maxfield Foundation from 1985 — which supports scientific research. At Rice, Maxfield has served on the Computational Engineering Campaign Leadership Committee from 1998, the Technology Transfer Committee from 1998, and the External Board of the Rice Alliance for Technology & Entrepreneurship from 1999, as well as on the Board of Governors for the University. He is a lifetime member — and has served as an Advisory Council Member (1990–1999) — of the Rice Engineering Alumni Association, as well as a member of the Rice Associates from 1988.

On April 30, 2008, he joined Echelon Corporation in the interim role of Senior Vice President, Products. In this role, Maxfield led all of Echelon's product management, hardware, software, and mechanical engineering teams. He has also served as a member of Echelon's Board of Directors, a position he had held since 1989.

His many awards include being named Entrepreneur of the Year by Harvard Business School (1980) and Outstanding Engineering Alumnus by Rice University (1999). He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Tau, and IEEE, and has authored or co-authored numerous articles in his field. Maxfield resides in California with his wife, Kathie.