The Rady School of Management at the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) has announced a $5 million gift from Giving Pledgers Ernest and Evelyn Rady and an additional $500,000 in gifts from alumni in support of the school’s entrepreneurship programs.

The gifts will fund the newly established Robert S. Sullivan Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation—named in recognition of the Rady School’s founding dean—and enable the center to build on the success of the California Institute for Innovation and Development, which Sullivan founded in 2012. To that end, the center will advance the Rady School’s cross-disciplinary and inclusive training programs, which address complex business problems through new ventures and innovation. In 2004, the couple made a $30 million naming gift to the school of management.

The Rady School also announced Gene Yeo (MBA ’08) as the inaugural recipient of its Entrepreneurial Achievement Award, celebrating the impact of entrepreneurship in the San Diego region. Yeo, a Rady School alumnus and a professor of cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego, has founded five biotech companies and authored more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications.

“The Rady School has a strong legacy of creating entrepreneurs who spur social change and improve the way people live and work,” said Rady School dean Lisa Ordóñez. “[The] Sullivan Center will allow the Rady School to continue to be a leader in positioning even more entrepreneurs prominently in areas such as tech, life sciences, and the blue economy—solving complex problems that will have a meaningful impact on people’s lives.”

(Photo credit: University of California San Diego)