The University of California, Berkeley, has announced three gifts totaling $75 million in support of computing and data science research and education.

Gifts of $25 million each from professors Scott Shenker and Ion Stoica of the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) and the College of Engineering and a donor who wishes to remain anonymous will help fund construction and development of a new home for CDSS. Called the Gateway and scheduled to open in 2025, the planned nexus for collaborative, integrated data science and computing education and research to help solve societal problems will provide CDSS faculty, students, and staff with 380,000 square feet of space for research, teaching, and co-creation and connect computing and data science with other disciplines. A portion of Stoica's gift also will support the addition of two full-time faculty positions in computer science.

In February 2020, the Gateway received a lead gift of $252 million, the largest single contribution in the university's history, from an anonymous donor. The university has been working to raise an additional $300 million, and with the latest gifts, the data hub facility is halfway funded.

"We want to build an idea factory, an ecosystem where students, faculty, and staff can come together to tackle complex societal problems and pioneer new approaches in computing and data science," said Stoica. "We don't know what those future innovations will look like, but we want to create an environment that will attract the best people and [be] where great ideas will flourish."

(Image credit: Weiss/Manfredi)