Silicon Valley venture capitalist Mark A. Stevens and his wife, Mary, have made a $22 million gift to the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering to create an institute to commercialize faculty technology innovations and to teach students the fundamentals of the commercialization process.

C. L. Max Nikias, dean of the Viterbi School, said the new institute would be called the Mark and Mary Stevens Institute for Technology Commercialization, or SITeC, and would have a professional staff, including an executive director, an intellectual property attorney, and marketing experts, to help USC researchers commercialize new technologies produced by their work. In collaboration with the schools of business and law, the institute will also provide technology commercialization education and training for undergraduate and graduate engineering students.

"It's a great honor that Mary and Mark Stevens have chosen to associate their name with an academic enterprise dedicated to encouraging innovation in the lab and translation to the marketplace," said university president Steven B. Sample. "Drawing on his USC undergraduate and graduate education in economics and electrical and computer engineering, Mark Stevens has worked diligently as an inspired entrepreneur to further the commercialization of technology."

Stevens, 44, is a general partner at Sequoia Capital in Menlo Park, California; he serves as a a USC trustee and member of the Viterbi School board of councilors.