Media Contacts: Emily Gowdey-Backus: 978-934-3369 or [email protected] and Nancy Cicco: 978-934-4944 or [email protected]
UMass Lowell will launch a brand new faculty of pc science to be named in honor of distinguished alumnus Wealthy Miner, co-founder of Android, the corporate and cell working system which was acquired and launched by Google.
College management had approached Miner, believing his story and accomplishments would contribute to the imaginative and prescient they’d for the brand new faculty. Immediately, the UMass Board of Trustees authorised establishing the Richard A. Miner Faculty of Pc & Data Sciences at UMass Lowell via a $5 million donation from Miner in addition to a $2 million matching contribution from the state.
“UMass Lowell’s newly named Richard A. Miner Faculty of Pc & Data Sciences additional elevates a program well-known for transformative training and pioneering analysis within the subject,” stated UMass Lowell Chancellor Jacquie Moloney. “We’re profoundly indebted to Wealthy. His newest reward displays his ongoing beneficiant donation of his time, experience and assets to assist college students via entrepreneurial competitions like UMass Lowell’s DifferenceMaker and put together them to grow to be leaders of their careers.”
An esteemed historical past
Miner, who holds three levels in pc science from UMass Lowell (B.S. 1986, M.S. 1989, Ph.D. 1997) exemplifies the college’s longstanding funding in and dedication to making ready college students for the ever-evolving trade.
Immediately, the division, elevated to a college with the trustees’ vote, is residence to just about 1,600 undergraduate college students and greater than 300 graduate college students, making it the most important tutorial program on campus with practically 6% of the entire UMass Lowell undergraduate inhabitants. From fall 2016 to fall 2021, UMass Lowell’s undergraduate enrollment in pc science packages elevated by greater than 50%. This yr, a report 12% of scholars in UMass Lowell’s applicant pool listed pc science as their meant main.
UMass Lowell analysis expenditures in pc science have grown in tandem with enrollment, leaping from $2.7 million in 2016 to $4.4 million in 2021. School are authorities on an unlimited array of topics from synthetic intelligence, visualization, robotics, pure language processing, information analytics, pc safety and privateness, to well being informatics and extra.
Miner co-founded Android, the world’s hottest working system with over 3 billion customers. After promoting Android to Google in 2005 and launching the primary few releases, Wealthy co-founded GV, Google’s first enterprise fund. GV has led investments in plenty of the previous decade’s most profitable startups. In his position with GV, Wealthy backed a few of Massachusetts’ high startups together with Recorded Future, Toast, Hubspot and Tamr.
As a UMass Lowell undergraduate, Miner wrote pc packages for the Commodore 64, a first-generation gaming system. In his graduate years, his work with the college’s Heart for Productiveness Enhancement paved the way in which for breakthroughs in imagery, video digitization and videoconferencing. In that very same college lab, he helped incubate Avid Expertise, the world’s first pc video enhancing platform. He later went on to co-found Wildfire Communications, the primary voice-based private assistant – patenting most of the ideas now widespread in at this time’s voice assistants. He credit his UMass Lowell training as key to his entrepreneurial success and believes his donation will assist pc science college students see how limitless their future is as they observe their ardour.
“UMass Lowell ready me academically and entrepreneurially for a profession the place I used to be in a position to contribute to so many impactful improvements. I’m honored to have the ability to give again in ways in which would possibly encourage others to fulfill or exceed their desires,” Miner stated.
Miner has returned to UMass Lowell to share his story and mentor college students, together with those that take part within the college’s Rist DifferenceMaker Institute, a program which offers entrepreneurship training and alternatives. In 2012, he established the Professor Patrick D. Krolak Innovation Scholarship. Named for Miner’s mentor, a former UMass Lowell pc science school member admired for his collaborative strategy to analysis, these scholarships are open to UMass Lowell pc science college students.
The subsequent era
Establishing the college exemplifies UMass Lowell’s dedication to offering pc science college students with the tutorial coursework, laboratory analysis, cooperative training, and internship alternatives they want to reach the quickly evolving subject.
Housed throughout the college’s Kennedy Faculty of Sciences, the Richard A. Miner Faculty of Pc & Data Sciences presents bachelor’s, grasp’s and doctoral packages mixing utilized and theoretical research of computation. The course of research additionally consists of choices for minors in robotics, cybersecurity, information science and bio-cheminfomatics. In partnership with the college’s Division of Graduate, On-line and Skilled Research, the college additionally presents certificates in cybersecurity, methods fashions and administration and telecommunication.
“The brand new Richard A. Miner Faculty of Pc & Data Sciences is designed to offer instructional and analysis alternatives to a various physique of scholars and college. Collectively, they are going to make vital discoveries and improvements that deal with most of the challenges that our world faces. In an more and more interconnected world, the college will enlighten our future and scale back our uncertainties. We’re grateful to Wealthy Miner for this chance to considerably develop the college,” stated Kennedy Faculty of Sciences Dean Noureddine Melikechi, professor of physics.
The college is planning a fall dedication ceremony to honor Miner and the brand new faculty.
UMass Lowell is a nationwide analysis college positioned on a high-energy campus within the coronary heart of a world neighborhood. The college presents its college students bachelor’s, grasp’s and doctoral levels in enterprise, training, engineering, effective arts, well being, humanities, sciences and social sciences. UMass Lowell delivers high-quality instructional packages, vigorous hands-on studying and private consideration from main school and employees, all of which put together graduates to be leaders of their communities and across the globe. www.uml.edu
