Announcing $25 Million Investment in Computational Biology

Dear Members of the CMU Community:

I am thrilled to announce that Carnegie Mellon Trustee Ray Lane and his wife, Stephanie, have made a monumental, $25 million investment in support of our Computational Biology Department. This gift will support two important priorities: creating an endowment to fuel the department’s strategic growth and providing the funding to establish the department’s future home in the new Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences.

In recognition of this investment and their prior support of the program, CMU will name the department the Ray and Stephanie Lane Computational Biology Department — the first named academic department at the university. Read more about the Lanes’ gift and incredible impact at CMU.

Ray and Stephanie are passionate advocates for the power and possibilities of computational biology, and provided critical support for the department’s formation under the leadership of founding Department Head Bob Murphy. The endowed fund announced today will support Carnegie Mellon’s faculty scholars in realizing life-changing discoveries and treatments while also expanding resources for talent recruitment and retention and innovative academic programming. The department’s new home on Forbes Avenue is expected to be under construction next year and open in 2027.

Ray and Stephanie previously established 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. Since then, U.S. News & World Report has consistently ranked the program in the top three nationally, and the Lanes’ generosity has supported faculty members, post-doctoral researchers and more than 20 fellowships for graduate students.

Ray’s storied career in the tech industry is filled with highlights, including serving as the president and chief operating officer of Oracle in the 1990s, executive chairman at Hewlett-Packard and managing partner at Kleiner Perkins. Today, he is the managing partner of GreatPoint Ventures.

Ray has served on Carnegie Mellon’s Board of Trustees, including as the former chair, for three decades. He and Stephanie have also volunteered for multiple advisory committees and remain active in engaging alumni and parents on behalf of the university.

Please join me in congratulating Dean Martial Hebert, Department Head Russell Schwartz and the students, faculty, staff and alumni of the Ray and Stephanie Lane Computational Biology Department and in thanking Ray and Stephanie for their extraordinary vision and transformative generosity.

Warm regards,

Farnam Jahanian
President
Henry L. Hillman President’s Chair