A $25 million gift to Carnegie Mellon University's computational biology department will create an endowment to back its various strategic priorities and build a new home for those efforts.
Given on behalf of CMU trustee Ray Lane and his wife, Stephanie Lane, the financial funding also leads to a renaming of the department to the Ray and Stephanie Lane Computational Biology Department, the first named academic department at CMU.
"Ray and Stephanie Lane have been passionate advocates for the power and possibilities of computational biology since the department’s formation," CMU President Farnam Jahanian said in a statement. "With their support, our researchers are making life-changing discoveries and creating lifesaving treatments. I am deeply grateful for their investment in Carnegie Mellon University."
With the use of computers and algorithms, computational biology aids scientists in the understanding and solving of mysteries in the world of living things, like how human bodies work and why diseases happen. At CMU, the department features faculty who work in biological sciences, computer science and statistics and data science.
The department will eventually be based out of the new Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences, which will be completed by 2027.
The funding from the Lanes builds on prior investments the couple has made to CMU, where Ray has served as a trustee for over three decades.
Their donations have led to the establishment of the Ray and Stephanie Lane professorship in computational biology, the Ray and Stephanie Lane post-doctoral program in computational biology and the Raymond Lane Fellowship in computational biology. CMU credits this funding with supporting department faculty, post-doctoral researchers and over 20 fellowships for graduate students as a result.
"From our first understanding of this striking and developing field, Stephanie and I have been excited by its promise to make breakthroughs that open new pathways into the unknown, advance medical research and cure diseases that impact people and families across the planet," Ray Lane said in a statement. "To be affiliated with this critically important department has been gratifying."
Ray Lane began his career in the tech industry at IBM Corp. in the 1960s and served as president and COO during Oracle Corp.'s 1990s turnaround. He would go on to serve as the executive chairman of HP Inc. and managing partner at Kleiner Perkins. He's actively a managing partner at San Francisco-based venture capital firm GreatPoint Ventures.
