Rice University’s Office of Research has bolstered its commitment to foster collaborations and educational partnerships with health-related institutions of the Texas Medical Center by hiring Becky Hall Frenkel to lead its Educational and Research Initiatives for Collaborative Health (ENRICH) office. She began official duties July following the work of previous executive director Sharon Pepper.
As executive director, Hall Frenkel will develop an expansion plan for deepening Rice’s contributions to health, a priority of the university’s Momentous strategic plan, and will steward Rice’s institutional health partnerships across Houston and beyond.
“Rice brings two things to the Texas Medical Center that are hard to find together: first, faculty whose research expertise depth sits in the disciplines that are upstream of medicine and not produced by medicine, and second, the reputation of our Rice students whose intellectual power and curiosity are tenacious enough to pursue the hardest challenges and devise out of the box solutions,” Hall Frenkel said.
“What also makes our role distinctive is structural. Rice is neighbors with the largest medical center in the world, and we are not a hospital or a medical school. We have no clinical footprint of our own, which means we can convene without competing. That distinction lets us hold space as a middle ground and bring people together in configurations that would be difficult to assemble any other way.”
Hall Frenkel most recently served as vice president of strategy and academic affairs at Houston Methodist. She worked as a strategic adviser to C-suite executives and offered 15 years of progressive leadership to the hospital. She also directed three institutional strategic planning cycles totaling $3+ billion in investments and served as the principal executive for joint partnerships. Prior to Houston Methodist, she was Baylor College of Medicine faculty where she led a federally funded research laboratory and multi-institutional consortium studying cell signaling biochemistry and cancer diagnostics.
This experience, she said, will support her work at Rice to enhance ENRICH’s mission.
“I have spent my career inside the medical center, and I am joining a university that sees it from just outside,” she said. “Both vantage points are essential. Being able to hold them at once is where the real opportunity is.”
Hall Frenkel will report to Executive Vice President for Research David Scholl for research in collaborative health, and the Provost Amy Dittmar for collaborative health education.
“Becky is exceptionally well positioned to lead ENRICH because she understands both the academic and clinical landscapes that drive innovation in health,” said David Sholl, executive vice president for research. “Through her years of leadership at Houston Methodist and her long-standing collaborations with Rice, she has built trusted relationships across the Texas Medical Center while developing a deep appreciation for the strengths our university brings to interdisciplinary research and education. Her strategic vision, collaborative approach and ability to connect people and ideas will strengthen Rice’s health partnerships and accelerate our efforts to expand the university’s impact in the health care field.”
Hall Frenkel holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a doctorate in immunology from Baylor College of Medicine, where she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular and cellular biology.
She is a member of the Association of American Medical Colleges and has served on the Group for Institutional Planning and the Group on Research Advancement and Development. She is also a member of the Council on Government Relations, the National Organization of Research Development Professionals and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has served on many executive advisory boards for multi-institutional organizations including for the Digital Health Institute, Center for Human Performance and Center for Neural Systems Restoration — all collaborations between Rice and Houston Methodist — and the Center for Health and Nature, led by Houston Methodist and Texas A&M University.