Institute as an Example of “Generosity From Afar”

In a BU Today article on the record-breaking Kilachand gift to Honors College, the significance and importance of donations by international alumni were highlighted, including the generous gift from Bahaa Hariri in support of the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering. In the article, the Hariri Institute Founding Director, Azer Bestavros, explained that donations from international alumni are invaluable for research projects that are not likely to be supported through typical US funding channels: “there are many dimensions of research in computing and in computational sciences that are quite hard to support through U.S.-based institutions.” Digitizing text in different languages and scripts, inventing technology for rural developing nations, or devising techniques to counter censorship of authoritarian governments have less application at home and “are far more relevant to international alumni” [Full Article]