University of Illinois alumnus Thomas Siebel, founder and former chairman and CEO of Siebel Systems Inc., has pledged to include a $100 million gift to support science and engineering programs at the school's Urbana-Champaign campus in his will, the Chicago Tribune reports.

The largest gift in university history was revealed just days after the announcement of an anonymous $100 million gift to the University of Chicago. Unlike typical bequests, however, Siebel's pledge could begin funding projects as soon as next year and will likely be spent over the next two decades. Siebel said he plans to create a task force comprised of faculty members and administrators to determine how best to use the gift, and added that he is particularly interested in research on alternative sources of energy as well as stem cell research.

The university highlighted Siebel's gift, along with two other major donations, in publicly launching a $2.25 billion capital campaign — one of the most ambitious ever announced by a public university; the campaign is expected to last through 2011.

Siebel, who earned a bachelor's degree in history (1975), a master's in business administration (1983), and a master's in computer science (1985) from the school, donated $32 million to UI in 1999 to help construct the Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computer Science on the Urbana campus. The new pledge, said UI Urbana-Champaign chancellor Richard Herman, "is a gift that speaks to our aspirations to be second to none among public research universities. It is a gift that sets a high-water mark for other donations. I know that his goal is [the same as] ours: to take the resources that come with this gift and use them to lift up our efforts and transform the institution for the future."