Last week Carnegie Mellon University announced that electronic design automation company Cadence Design Systems and CEO Lip-Bu Tan have provided the university with $6 million in gifts to support faculty members within Carnegie Mellon’s computer-related fields.
With its $3 million gift, Cadence created the Cadence Design Systems Endowed Chair in Computer Science, while Tan and his wife Ysa Loo pledged their $3 million gift toward creating the Tan Family Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). Taken together, these gifts will provide critical funding to support faculty members’ research and teaching activities.
Cadence provides a range of products used by electronic systems and semiconductor companies in creating innovative end products. Carnegie Mellon is an existing member of the company’s Academic Network Program, designed to promote the spread of technological expertise regarding microelectronic systems development throughout member universities, research institutes and industry advisors.
Accord to Cadence Chairman John Shoven, "Cadence is privileged to institute an endowed chair in the School of Computer Science…we are fortunate to have many CMU CS graduates on our Cadence team and look forward to enabling the advancement of faculty members' research priorities."
Tan, who has been CEO of Cadence since 2009, made his matching gift following his existing involvement with and support of Carnegie Mellon’s mission. He is a member of the university’s Board of Trustees as well as the College of Engineering’s Dean’s Advisory Council. Both of his sons, Andrew and Elliott, received master’s degrees from Carnegie Mellon’s College of Engineering.
"Carnegie Mellon's ECE department has provided world-class education and an incredible learning experience to our two sons," said Tan. "Ysa and I are delighted to support the ECE department as it continues pushing the frontiers of cutting-edge, innovative research."
Carnegie Mellon President Farnam Jahanian underscored the importance of these endowed professorships: "Exceptional people with pioneering ideas have fueled Carnegie Mellon's game-changing research and education from the very beginning, so investing in human capital development is one of the most important ways that we can retain our global leadership. Endowed professorships provide a singularly powerful tool to support these bright minds, and we are grateful to Cadence, Lip-Bu and Ysa for their exceptional generosity toward this critical priority."
