Miami University receives $20 million for new data science building

Miami University has received a historic eight-figure donation from a prominent alumnus that will help fund a new data science building on campus.

The $20 million gift from entrepreneur Rick McVey, a 1981 Miami graduate and founder of MarketAxess, a New York-based financial technology company, will fund the construction of a new data science building on the university's Oxford campus.

It’s one of the top-five largest single gifts in Miami’s history, officials said. The building will be named the Richard M. McVey Data Science Building in his honor, an action recently approved by the university’s board of trustees.

In a release, Miami President Greg Crawford called the gift “central” to fulfilling Miami’s vision for creating “an academic epicenter of data science.” He thanked McVey for his leadership, generosity and service.

“An interdisciplinary team of faculty and staff have been working on a design for this building. This gift makes that vision a reality,” Crawford said.

The three-story data science building will be approximately 85,000-square-feet and located along Tallawanda Road near Withrow Hall and Benton Hall. A residence hall previously stood at the site; that building was demolished and the site is now clear for construction. That's expected to begin in late spring 2021, Carole Johnson, Miami spokeswoman, told me.

The building will house one of Miami’s newest departments, Emerging Technology in Business and Design, as well as the departments of statistics and mathematics, the Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies and the Center for Analytics and Data Science.

The building will also facilitate partnerships with the Farmer School of Business and the College of Engineering and Computing.

As a student, McVey was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity as well as the men’s golf team, which won the 1981 Mid-American Conference championship. He serves as a member of the Miami University Foundation board of directors, where he is chair of the investment committee for the Miami endowment.

McVey founded MarketAxess, which operates a patented electronic trading platform, in April 2000 and took the company public in November 2004. In 2014, he contributed $240,000 to create two new Miami University scholarships – the Richard McVey Farmer School of Business Scholarship and the Richard McVey Golf Scholarship. 

“I feel great about giving back to Miami so other students have the same opportunities I did,” McVey said at the time. “I’m a strong believer in education for the advancement of individuals and our society.”

The Richard M. McVey Data Science Building is scheduled for completion in summer 2023.