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The City University of New York system is receiving the largest donation in its history, intended to help the urban university boost its technology and artificial intelligence programs.
CUNY plans to announce today that it will receive $75 million from the Simons Foundation, a philanthropy focused on furthering research in math and sciences.
The $75 million will be split: $50 million will go toward hiring 25 new faculty members and creating a master’s degree program in computational science.
The remaining $25 million will bolster CUNY’s participation in New York governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed Empire AI project. The project was announced earlier this year, focused on creating jobs, promoting AI research and seeking potential opportunities to use AI for “public good,” according to the governor.
CUNY joins a consortium of other institutions in the new Empire AI initiative, including Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, SUNY and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It is backed by more than $400 million in public and private funding.
“New York’s higher education institutions, including CUNY, have long been leaders in research and scholarship and this new initiative and computational facility will allow us to collectively advance and utilize AI technology and create a national model for this work,” CUNY chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez said in a statement.
The Simons Foundation previously made headlines in June 2022 when it donated $500 million to Stony Brook University, which is part of the State University of New York system.
