The University of Texas at Austin has announced a five-year, $9.3 million grant from the Dallas-based O'Donnell Foundation in support of student fellowships, instruction, and faculty recruitment at the university's Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences.

ICES is dedicated to a relatively new discipline that combines mathematical modeling, applied mathematics, software engineering, and computational visualization. The grant includes $3 million to support twelve additional fellowships of $50,000 each for students in the ICES Computational Sciences, Engineering, and Math graduate program, boosting the number of fellows in the program to thirty-four, and $1.3 million for the hiring of additional faculty members to supplement teaching in the multidisciplinary graduate program. The remaining $5 million will be added to an endowment that supports newly hired faculty members for their first five years.

"This generous gift is crucially important to our faculty recruiting efforts and to the growth and quality of our graduate degree program," said ICES director J. Tinsley Oden. "The continued and generous support of the O'Donnell Foundation is greatly appreciated."