21 December 2023 – Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang announced that he will make a personal donation of RMB 200 million (approx. US$28 million) to the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Yang’s alma mater university, to drive scientific research innovation and nurture young talent.
The donation is in recognition of the university’s 65th anniversary. Yang’s donation will be used to support the construction of a new teaching building for young talent focusing on scientific research and innovation. Located at the East Campus of USTC in Hefei, China, the new building will break ground in early 2024 and is due to be completed in 2028 in time for USTC’s 70th anniversary.
In his speech at the ceremony yesterday, Yang said that he hopes that with this new facility at USTC, the young talent who will study in this building, once construction has been completed, will achieve excellent results in the first-class learning and scientific research environment. He also hopes that they can aim high and devote themselves to scientific research, contributing to drive scientific development. “It would be my great honor if I could inspire some alumni to pass on the culture of giving back to my alma mater,” said Yang. No matter what routes students decide to follow post-graduation; Yang hopes that they can also remember their years of study spent at the university.
Yang has a strong enthusiasm for advancing education, and an area he’s committed to philanthropically.
- In 2015, he donated RMB 10 million to Shanghai Jiao Tong University to establish the Yang Yuanqing Education Fund and the 1985 CS Graduates Education & Development Fund.
- In 2015, the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) created the Yang Scholars program at the UNC School of Medicine to recognize individuals who have made significant scholarly contributions to their field and received national recognition for their research.
- In 2017, he made another RMB 10 million donation to establish an education fund at USTC.
- In 2020, he donated a further RMB 10 million to support COVID-19 research at USTC and the development of the University’s Health Services Research Center and Public Health and Preventive Medicine discipline.
- He made another donation of RMB 100 million in 2021 to Shanghai Jiao Tong University to build a state-of-the-art liquid-cooling high-performance computing center.
- In 2022, he expressed his support to scientific research innovation and talented young mathematicians by making donation to Qiuzhen College of Tsinghua University.
