Dean Shankar Sastry and IEOR alumnus Coleman Fung (right) discuss the details of Fung’s $15 million gift to the College of Engineering.

A $15 million pledge to the college from alumnus Coleman Fung (B.S.’87 IEOR) promises to enable the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR) to broaden its scope and link closely to new college programs emphasizing technology innovation and social entrepreneurship.

The gift, which will support faculty and students in IEOR and related programs, reflects new trends in a field that originally focused on manufacturing but has expanded to include domains such as services, financial markets, health care and energy regulation.

To recognize the gift, Dean Shankar Sastry will seek approval to rename the department in Fung’s name, thus creating the first named engineering department. UC Berkeley has one other named department, the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science. According to Sastry, IEOR’s new name will reflect the department’s major new strategic directions as well as Fung’s gift.

“It is critical that the College of Engineering teach the systems, processes and tools for the management of innovation,” Sastry says. “We expect this department to be the college’s home for teaching and research on managing the innovation chain and on how emerging technologies and services can be designed, optimized and disseminated in global markets.”

Fung, 45, is founder of New York–based OpenLink Financial, which develops financial and risk management software. An active philanthropist, Fung supports global health and K–12 education as well as his alma mater; at UC Berkeley, he has endowed an IEOR chair in financial modeling, a risk management research center in the Department of Economics and a media center in the C.V. Starr East Asian Library.