BY KATHARINE SHILCUTT
When David Sholl arrived at Rice in January 2026 as executive vice president for research, he brought with him a résumé that zigzags across disciplines and institutions: theoretical physics, applied mathematics, chemistry, chemical engineering, leadership at Georgia Institute of Technology, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
What ties it together, he said, is a curiosity about systems — scientific and organizational — and a belief that creativity can be cultivated. In his first months on campus, Sholl has been listening, touring labs and studios and classrooms, and thinking about how to help Rice’s research enterprise sharpen its focus and amplify its impact.
“I had an outstanding impression of Rice before I came,” Sholl said. “That’s been greatly amplified since I’ve realized how good the people are here and what the possibilities are.”
You started in theoretical physics as an undergraduate. How did that path lead you here?
It was really just a series of opportunities that seemed interesting. Through some connections I ended up applying to an applied math Ph.D. program. Almost all the way along, there’s some overlap, and once you make a step like that five times, you can end up pretty far away from where you started.
My thesis advisor was a chemist, so I was doing theoretical chemistry, and then I did a postdoc in a chemical engineering department and discovered there were good job opportunities in chemical engineering. I eventually became an assistant professor in chemical engineering, even though I’d never taken a chemical engineering class. So I had to learn what I was teaching the students.
Along the way, my own research drifted from very fundamental things to quite applied things over time. At Georgia Tech, I was head of a big department for eight years. I appreciated that by being in charge of an organization like that, you can have a positive influence over a wider group of people. Then I went to a national lab. It was fascinating — so different from the university system. I got to see the advantages and the complications. And then one day, (Rice President) Reggie (DesRoches) called me … and here we are today.
What was it like moving from academia to a national lab?
Each discipline or place has its own deep culture, and you have to respect that culture and understand what people value. A university is a very decentralized organization. The national lab is a very hierarchical organization. Everybody knows who their boss is and who your boss’s boss is. There’s an org chart, and it’s a real thing.
I led a joint institute between the national lab and the University of Tennessee. Very different large organizations, similar goals. But not all the people on both sides knew how to talk to the other side. I could act as a cultural translator between the two.
Are there lessons from that experience you’d like to bring to Rice?
I think something we can do better at Rice is winning large research programs that involve teams of people. That’s in the DNA of national labs. It’s not that at the university we have to do everything the same way as a national lab, but I think there are some process things we can adapt to increase our successes with large programs.
You’ve written a book, “Success and Creativity in Scientific Research: Amaze Your Friends and Surprise Yourself,” based on a popular series of lectures. Do scientists think of themselves as creative?
I think they do. But one of the strange things in scientific research is that, at least in most fields in engineering, we don’t actually train people how to do research. It’s almost like having a creative writing course except we don’t talk about writing. It’s assumed you pick that up osmotically.
One goal of my book was to get people to step back and think a little bit about how you generate creative research questions. Creativity is a learned skill. It’s something we can all get better at.
The strength of universities in general, and in particular Rice, is the creativity of the faculty. My faculty colleagues are amazing. I’ve been around a lot of universities, and these are really, really creative people.
The strength of universities in general, and in particular Rice, is the creativity of the faculty. My faculty colleagues are amazing. I’ve been around a lot of universities, and these are really, really creative people.
What have you enjoyed most about the job so far?
One of the really fun things about this job is that I get to learn about everything across the university. The science and engineering folks are amazing. But for me, maybe the most enjoyable part has been learning about things outside my technical discipline that are also really amazing.
To give just one example, right across the road from my office, we have folks who work on technologies and human factors for voting — fantastically important problems, rigorous, careful science. There’s just an amazing amount of stuff happening at the university.
How do you see Rice’s research enterprise evolving, especially given Houston’s strengths as a global capital of energy, medicine and space sciences?
There’s a sense that new things can happen here. It’s not just, “We’ve done it this way forever.” That implies that the best things are still ahead of us. That sense of growth and possibility permeates an institution.
Houston's connections to the energy industry, to the health care infrastructure in the medical center, to space science — those are real differentiators compared to any other university in the country. And strategically, we have to think about where we can really differentiate ourselves. Our goals aren’t just being as good as everybody else.
What are your top priorities at Rice?
External reputation. Reputational lift for the university makes a very big difference. It’s a long game. You can’t change it overnight. But continuing to bring people here — large conferences, major events — cements in their mind that Rice is a major intellectual player in the country. We’ve already talked about helping faculty be more effective in competing for large research awards. There’s lots of ambition around campus to do that.
And then there’s something a little bit boring but really important: having the Office of Research continue to run in a really efficient way. Fundamentally, we’re a service organization to the faculty researchers. We’re here to make their research more effective. Compliance issues with federal funding are complicated, so our job is to continue working on our processes to make them efficient and not hamper what people are trying to do.
Finally: the strategic plan, Momentous. Is it an effective roadmap?
Like many people, I’m pretty skeptical of strategic plans of any big organization. Sometimes you read them, and there are all the buzzwords, and you get to the end and think, “What did I learn from this?”
But I will say, Momentous offers a real plan. I was impressed by it. There were genuine strategic choices made. It’s not just saying, ‘Here are three areas that are important to society,’ but these are things that are important to society where Rice can lead. That’s a strategic plan. And it doesn’t stop people from working on other stuff. But it says that, over the long run, we should look for ways to amplify those.