UC-San Francisco Lands $25 Million, and UC-San Diego Gets $20 Million (Gifts Roundup)

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

University of California at San Francisco

Bill and Susan Oberndorf pledged $25 million through their Susan and Bill Oberndorf Foundation. Most of the total, $20 million, is unrestricted, to be used at the discretion of Matthew State, who is chairman of the psychiatry department and the Oberndorf Family Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry.

The remaining $5 million will be used to support translational research projects in psychiatry and the neurosciences.

Bill Oberndorf co-founded SPO Partners, a Mill Valley, Calif., investment firm, in 1989 and later Oberndorf Enterprises, an investment business in San Francisco. He serves on the university’s Board of Overseers.

University of California at San Diego

James and Marilyn Simons pledged $20 million through their Simons Foundation to back operations of the Simons Observatory, which the university is building in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The money will also pay for data-analysis projects over five years beginning in 2022.

James Simons founded Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund. A respected mathematician, he worked as a code breaker for the National Security Agency in 1964 and as a researcher for the Communications Research Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses. He served as chairman of the mathematics department at Stony Brook University from 1968 to 1978.

This is the second donation the couple has given to support the observatory; the first was $38.4 million, in 2016.

University of Rhode Island

Michael and Elizabeth Fascitelli gave $10 million for the College of Engineering. Half of the gift will pay for lab and research equipment for the Kingston Campus’s new engineering building, which will be named for the donors. The remaining $5 million will establish an endowment for programs and efforts approved by the dean of the college.

Michael Fascitelli runs his family investment office, MDF Capital, and is a former president and CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, and a former president of Alexander’s Inc., which are commercial real-estate companies. He earned an engineering degree from the university in 1978. Elizabeth Fascitelli is a managing director at Goldman Sachs.

Mark Twain House and Museum

David and Michelle Baldacci donated $1 million to expand programming and planning efforts. A portion of the gift matches as much as $100,000 in donations from other donors.

David Baldacci is an author who has published dozens of best-selling novels. He was a practicing lawyer in Washington for nearly a decade before he started writing novels, several of which have been adapted for film and television.

He has served on the museum’s Board of Trustees since 2012, and he and his wife back its Mark My Words lecture series, which brings important authors to the museum to speak.

Michigan State University’s College of Engineering

Acting MSU President Satish Udpa and his wife, Lalita Udpa, gave $1 million to create the Satish and Lalita Udpa Endowed Graduate Fellowship and the Satish and Lalita Udpa Endowed Scholarship.

The Udpas are engineering professors at Michigan State and experts in the area of nondestructive evaluation. Satish Udpa is a former dean of the College of Engineering and chair of the department of electrical and computer engineering.

To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.