Private Sector Funding

The members of our Department have many relationships with corporations. Interactions include support of individual faculty member's research programs, gifts to support graduate fellowships, and general donations to the Department.. In addition, many faculty members have active collaborations with companies that include sending students for summer internships and hosting extended visits by employees from companies.

In terms of financial contributions to the department (and to UMIACS in support of CS faculty), over $2,217,000 has been donated since January 1, 2000. Of that total, $1.9 million was in support of faculty research, $120,000 was in the form of fellowships for students, and $65,000 was in support of department wide activities (including the department lecture series and high school outreach programs). The amount given by various companies is shown in the table below. Funds to support individual faculty members were given to ten faculty (Agrawala, Arbaugh, Bederson, Davis, Door, Hendler, Hollingsworth, Pugh, Shneiderman, and Shankar). The total amount of corporate cash support per faculty member ranged from $25,000 to $1,012,000.

Company Amount

Fujitsu 1,000,000

Chevron 216,000

Microsoft 195,000

IBM 132,000

Aerospace 70,000

AOL 70,000

Sun Microsystems 70,000

BBNT 50,000

Hughes Network 50,000

Lockheed Martin 50,000

Ricoh 50,000

Toshiba 50,000

Honda 32,000

Panasonic 27,000

SAIC 25,000

Intel 5,000

Koolspan 5,000

Total 2,217,706

In addition to cash contributions, significant in-kind donations of hardware and software have been received. The total value of donated hardware since January 2000 is over $500,000. Examples of in-kind donations include an IBM Power 4 system (valued at $400,000), several multiprocessor Ultra-Sparc III systems, and an ultra-high resolution monitor from IBM. In addition to outright donations of hardware, many vendors sell equipment to the department at deep discounts (frequently 60-90% off list price).