College Raises $200M for UMD Fearless Ideas Campaign

The University of Maryland’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences met its $200 million goal for the University of Maryland's fundraising campaign, Fearless Ideas: The Campaign for Maryland. Through October 31, 2021, the college raised $23.9 million for student support, $46.9 million for facilities, $47.2 million for faculty support and $82.5 million for research.

During the campaign, which runs from July 2014 through December 2021, the college received several significant gifts of over $1 million, including the university’s largest-ever single gift from an individual—a $31 million gift from alum Brendan Iribe.

Some of the college’s highlights from the campaign include:

• More than 100 alumni, faculty and staff members, corporate leaders and friends donated $38 million to construct the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering. Lead donors included alums Brendan Iribe and Michael Antonov. 

• A $1 million gift from alum Jagdeep Singh provided funds to support the makerspace, aka the Singh Sandbox, in the Brendan Iribe Center. Computer Science Professor Emeritus Bill Pugh and his wife Lisa Orange provided $500,000 to staff and operate the new makerspace and $250,000 to coordinate makerspaces across campus. 

• Carol Fullerton established Department of Mathematics graduate student fellowships to honor her late father, Nobel laureate and alum Herbert Hauptman. 

• Letters from Stephen Hawking to Physics Professor Emeritus Charles Misner sold at auction for nearly $300,000, which was used to establish the Joseph Weber Endowment for Gravitational Physics. Misner, with the support of his family, also established the Charles W. Misner Endowed Lectureship in Gravitational Physics.  

• Alums Andrew Balo and Nicholas Simon donated $1 million together to establish our first endowed life sciences chair, and their gift was matched by the Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative Fund. The college recruited National Academy of Sciences member and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Sean Carroll to UMD to hold the Andrew and Mary Balo and Nicholas and Susan Simon Endowed Chair. A leader in evolutionary developmental biology, Carroll studies the evolution of traits.

• Associate Professor Emeritus of Geology Peter Stifel gave $250,000 to sustain the Department of Geology’s senior thesis program.

• Created by alums and brothers Haroon, Idris and Zeki Moktarzada, the Mokhtarzada Hatchery launched this fall in the Department of Computer Science, providing dedicated working space and mentors to help UMD student entrepreneurs get their fearless ideas and startups off the ground.

• Alum Clay Siegall established the college’s first four-year full scholarships for undergraduates majoring in biological sciences. The first recipient, Maria Chen, graduated in 2019 and went on to medical school at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.

• Alum Tobin Marks created the Tobin J. Marks Endowed Lectureship in Chemical Discovery in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. The inaugural lecture was given in 2020 by Stanley Whittingham, 2019 Nobel laureate in chemistry.

• College Park Professor of Astronomy Neil Gehrels was named a 2017 Dan David Prize laureate for the Future Time Dimension in the field of astronomy a few days before he passed away. The prize included a $1 million award, and Gehrels’ family donated his share to establish the Neil Gehrels Memorial Endowment in Astrophysics to support UMD students and postdocs engaged in research with astrophysicists at NASA Goddard.

• The Brin family, including alums Samuel and Sergey and Mathematics Professor Emeritus Michael and his wife Eugenia, established two endowed chairs in mathematics and two endowed professorships in computer science. The family’s donations received matching funds from the Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative Fund. The college recruited quantum information expert Daniel Gottesman to UMD this year to hold one of the endowed positions in computer science.

• The Allen Steinhauer Fund in the Department of Entomology raised enough money during the campaign to get its total over $100,000, which allows the department to begin awarding fellowships to entomology graduate students.

• An anonymous meteorology alum created two new fellowships for graduate students in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science.

• Professor Emerita of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics Heven Sze endowed an award to support the professional development of graduate students doing research in the biomolecular sciences and genetics.