Gift will help make Oregon State University Research Center a reality.
Many universities have alumni with the financial means of making a big difference at their former schools. Oregon State University (OSU) is one of them. Recently, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang and his wife, Lori, donated $50 million to their alma mater, OSU, to advance research in AI, climate science, and robotics. The money will help fund a $200 million innovation complex.
The centerpiece of the research and education center will be a supercomputer—one of the country’s most powerful. The supercomputer, which will contain Nvidia CPUs and GPUs, will be used to solve global issues areas such as climate science, oceanography, sustainability, and water resources. The university has received commitments of at least $100 million in private gifts earmarked for the center.
According to the university, the facility also will support the semiconductor industries and other technologies in the state. It will serve both faculty, students, and business partners.
The 150,000-square-foot center will carry the name of its big donor couple, who met while undergrads in the university’s College of Engineering. It is expected to open in 2025 in the northwest corner of OSU’s Corvallis campus.
Huang received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from OSU and a master’s in electrical engineering from Stanford, in addition to honorary doctorate degrees, including one from OSU. Previously, the Huangs donated $5 million to OSU for a cancer research lab and $30 million for an engineering center at Stanford.
