Mar 11, 2017 07:35 AM EST By Emily Marks, UniversityHerald Reporter

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and the company donated a total of $50 million to the University of Washington. The gift is expected to be used for a new computer science and engineering school.

Allen is said to be giving $40 million, which will be set to fund an endowment. Microsoft Corp. will provide the rest, $10 million, Bloomberg reported.

The University of Washington's board of regents approved the changes to its computer science program on Thursday. It will become its own school instead of just being a department and will be called the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering.

Allen said that he hopes the school will strengthen UW's ability to rise in the field of computer science and would give the institution flexibility to do several things. He believes that the donation can help the department expand into various areas such as biological modeling to aerodynamics and to recruit top professors.

In the University of Washington's official website, UW president Ana Mari Cauce said that they will continue their commitment on both access and excellence. She expressed her gratitude to Paul Allen for his gift.

It was noted that the UW CSE has already generated innovations with global impact in the fields of mobile health, neural engineering, artificial intelligence, next-generation data storage and data science. The endowment is expected to generate $2 million a year in funds which the school can use for recruiting faculty as well as helping fund new ideas for research.

The gift comes after the University of Washington tries to raise $110 million for a second computer science and engineering building. It will be located across the street from the Paul G. Allen Center. The institution has broken ground on that project in January.

Paul Allen has a net worth of about $20 billion, which makes him the 34th richest person in the world. He left Microsoft in 1983 and co-founded Vulcan Inc., which houses his various investments and interests.

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