Donald A. Hicks Special Assistant, Office of the President Professor, School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences University of Texas at Dallas

Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy at The University of Texas at Dallas joined the faculty in 1975. He also serves as Special Assistant to University President David E. Daniel.  His research and consulting activities have been focused on technology innovation and processes of emerging technologies and industries.  Current research includes studies on prospects for  anticipating  demand  for ultra-precision nano-scale production, designer materials and toolsets; the role of venture capital investment in regional/industrial transformation; value creation in bioscience commercialization; the role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in health care service transformation; and time-to-market competitive pressures on product innovation and industry change.

Professor Hicks is the author of several books, major policy reports and scholarly articles. He serves on a variety of policy and economic development-related advisory groups and lectures frequently to industry, government academic, and nonprofit policy groups in the United States and abroad. He has delivered invited oral and written testimony before U.S. Congressional committees, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), National Science Foundation (NSF), and Texas legislative committees on industrial, technology and economic development policy issues.

He has served as a consultant and advisor for industry and government organizations throughout the United States and Europe, including the Conference Board, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Small Business Administration (SBA); Joint Economic Committee (JEC) and Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) of the U.S. Congress; Sematech and the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS); the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and Urban Land Institute (LILP), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Office of the Governor, the Office of the Texas Comptroller and the Texas National Laboratory Research Commission (TNLRC), Office of the Governor (North Carolina), Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC), pb Consult (Parsons-Brinkerhoff). International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), among others.

Siems has published more than 50 articles, some of which have appeared in such journals as Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, European Journal of Political Economy, Research in Finance, Business Economics, Review of Financial Economics, The Annals of Operations Research, and various Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas publications. Siems is the only two-time winner of NABE’s Edmund A. Mennis Contributed Paper Award, having won the award in 2006 for his co-authored paper, “Strengthening Globalization’s Invisible Hand: What Matters Most?” and in 2005 for his paper, “Who Supplied My Cheese? Supply Chain Management in the Global Economy.”

Siems earned a B.S.E. in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan in 1982 and an M.S. and Ph.D. in operations research from Southern Methodist University in 1985 and 1991, respectively. In addition, Siems is a 1989 graduate of the Public Finance Institute at the University of Michigan and a 1991 alumnus of the Graduate School of Banking at Colorado. Siems began his career with the Federal Reserve in 1984.

Siems is active in the Bank's economic education programs and has taught economics, statistics, finance, operations management and other engineering and business courses at SMU, LeTourneau University and the University of Dallas.