This Is Our Moment: Elevating Rice's Future

Reginald DesRoches is Rice University’s eighth president. He also serves as a professor of civil
and environmental engineering, and professor of mechanical engineering. As president,
DesRoches is the chief executive officer of the university and its 8,800 plus students, eight
schools and more than 900 faculty. He previously served as Rice's Howard Hughes Provost and
William and Stephanie Sick Dean of Engineering. Before his appointment at Rice, DesRoches
served as chair of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
DesRoches’ top priorities are to position Rice as the world’s premier university for both
teaching and research and to enable the university to reach a new level of distinction nationally
and internationally for world-class teaching, impactful research, award-winning scholarship and
insightful creative work.

He is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, Philosophical Society of Texas, and is a fellow of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science and the Structural Engineering Institute. DesRoches is also a
Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a member of the Academy of
Distinguished Alumni in Civil Engineering at his alma mater Berkeley and was named an
honorary alumnus of Georgia Tech.

DesRoches was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and grew up in Queens, New York. He earned his
Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, a Master of Science in Civil Engineering and a
Doctorate in Structural Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

DesRoches is married to Paula DesRoches, a highly accomplished healthcare professional, nurse
practitioner and administrator recognized for her leadership in occupational health. Paula is also
a university associate at Rice. The couple has three children, Andrew, Jacob and Shelby, who
graduated from Rice in 2023.