In 1969, Walter Loewenstern and Robert Maxfield founded ROLM Corporation with fellow ECE alumni Gene Richeson, and Ken Oshman. ROLM became a Fortune 500 company by manufacturing and selling computerized telephone exchanges and militarized computers. In 1984, ROLM—the name is formed from the first letters of the last names of its founders—was bought by International Business Machines (IBM) for $1.25 billion. By then it had revenues of about $1 billion and some 10,000 employees.
Loewenstern, Maxfield and Barbara Oshman, representing her late husband Ken Oshman, will discuss how they took their idea to market and built ROLM into a Fortune 500 Company. Their interactive talk, “Pioneers of Innovation: A Fireside Chat,” will be held on campus on Oct. 19 at 11:45 a.m. and is open to Rice students, alumni and faculty.
Richeson earned his B.A. in electrical engineering and his B.S. in the same at Rice in 1962 and 1963. He became an engineer with General Telephone and Electronics (GTE) Sylvania, in Mountain View, Calif. before earning his M.S.E.E. from Stanford in 1965. Richeson co-founded the Beyond War Foundation in 1980 and retired in 1988.
Oshman earned his B.A. in electrical engineering and his B.S. in the same at Rice in 1962 and 1963, respectively. He went on to earn a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Stanford in 1965 and 1967. Oshman went on to became chief executive of Echelon, a computer networking equipment manufacturer, in 1988. He also served on various corporate boards, including Knight Ridder, Sun Microsystems, ASK Computer Systems, StrataCom and Charles Schwab Corp. Oshman and his wife, Barbara, donated the lead gift to establish the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) at Rice, which was dedicated in December 2008. He died on Aug. 6, 2011.
Loewenstern earned his B.A. in electrical engineering and his B.S. in the same from Rice in 1958 and 1959. He earned an M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. from Stanford in 1963 and 1966. Loewenstern served as an officer in the U.S. Navy for two years and worked as an engineer for the Electronic Defense Lab of GTE Mountain View, Calif. before co-founding ROLM Corporation. After retiring he became involved with Junior Achievement, an organization that teaches children about business and entrepreneurship. He served as a founding board member of J.A. Worldwide, which recently was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He helped establish J.A. in Russia and serves on the J.A. Worldwide Advisory Board.
Maxfield earned his B.A. in electrical engineering and his B.S. in the same from Rice in 1963 and 1964. He earned an M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. from Stanford in 1966 and 1969. After leaving IBM, Maxfield became a venture partner with Kleiner Perkins from 1989 to 1992, and taught “Business Management for Engineers” at Stanford from 1989 to 1991. He served as a consulting professor in the Management Science and Engineering Department at Stanford from 1991 to 2007. Since 1991, Maxfield has been involved with the Santa Fe Institute as a trustee and researcher. He has advised the OpenStax project (www.openstax.org ) at Rice since 2000. From 1994 to 2012, Maxfield served on the Rice Board of Trustees, heading the finance committee for many years.
Loewenstern, Maxfield, Oshman and Richeson are recipients of the 2022 Dean’s Appreciation Award and will be honored at the Rice Engineering Alumni Celebration to be held the same day as the “Pioneers of Innovation” talk. The award recognizes contributions in innovation to engineering.
The “Pioneers of Innovation: A Fireside Chat,” will be held at the Grand Hall in the Rice Memorial Center. Register here to register for the event and reserve your lunch.