The Sinhas Wager $20 Million on a UNT AI College

Anuradha and Vikas Sinha gave the University of North Texas $20 million on September 8, enough to put their names on a new college of artificial intelligence. They have spent three years stacking gifts into UNT’s data and AI identity, first a department, then a lab, now a college.

University materials already list Dean Kinshuk at the head of the Anuradha and Vikas Sinha College of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Analytics. A campus party to celebrate the name is still scheduled for later this year.

Three Gifts in Three Years Bought a Named College

Vikas finished a UNT Ph.D. in information science, with a concentration in data science, in 2023 and joined the College of Information Leadership Board the same year. The family’s checks followed the diploma with unusual speed for a public university naming a college.

Taken together, the three gifts total $25.15 million. That is the price of a named college at a school that, in Fall 2025, enrolled 43,567 students and ranked as the fourth largest university in Texas, according to the UNT System’s audited fiscal 2025 report.

THE SINHA GIFT LADDER

The October 2024 gift did not arrive as a lump for a dean to spend. It was split into a $1 million Sinha Scholars Fund, $1 million for professorships, $500,000 for research, and $500,000 for special initiatives, and the department opened in January 2025.

The Ph.D. That Started With a Phone Call

Vikas and Anu each earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Sri Venkateswara University before coming to the United States. Both took graduate degrees at Florida Atlantic University. He later completed a master’s in predictive analytics at Northwestern University, then the UNT doctorate.

He grew up in Hyderabad as the eldest of three children. His father retired as surveyor general of India; his mother, who held a master’s in sociology, kept the house. Education, he has said, was the family’s foundation even when a government salary was not.

A Florida Atlantic professor answered a cold call and offered a fully funded assistantship in ocean engineering, the path he thought might lead toward research in Antarctica. Because he was not a U.S. citizen, government-tied internships were closed, so the work shifted into Fortran, C, and simulation. The resume started to look like computer science, and IBM hired him onto the OS/2 team through a contractor.

IBM later moved him to AIX in Austin. After he obtained a U.S. residence card, he took a management job at SPSS in Chicago in 1996, rose to head global R&D, and stayed on to lead predictive analytics after IBM bought SPSS in 2009. He left for CA Technologies, then for Broadcom after the 2018 acquisition, and UNT now describes him as vice president of the Mainframe Software Division.

The UNT chapter began when another alma mater told him a doctorate would require in-person classes he could not attend while relocating to Texas. Months later the College of Information called about a Ph.D. built for working professionals out of Frisco. “It was amazing. People don’t do that,” he said after finishing in 2023.

FROM DOCTORATE TO COLLEGE NAME

1. 2023: Completes the UNT Ph.D. and joins the College of Information Leadership Board.
2. October 1, 2024: The family announces the $3 million gift in 2024 that names the Department of Data Science.
3. January 2025: The named department opens inside the College of Information.
4. May 22, 2025: They add $2.15 million for the Sinha Innovation Lab for Data Science.
5. September 8, 2026: UNT announces the $20 million college naming.
6. Later in 2026: The university plans a campus celebration for the new name.

He still talks to doctoral students and argues for mainframe careers, a mainframe software career at Broadcom that looks, on paper, like the opposite of an AI college. The bet he is placing with Anu is that the people who run old systems at scale should help train the people who will govern new ones.

What the $20 Million Will Fund

UNT said the September gift creates six permanent endowments rather than a pile of operating cash. Endowments throw off income over years. They do not close a hole in this year’s budget.

THE SIX ENDOWMENTS

• College leadership: Permanent support for the people who run the new college.
• Student scholarships: Aid that continues after the news cycle ends.
• Endowed professorships: Faculty chairs meant to recruit and keep researchers.
• Entrepreneurship and incubation: Money for student ventures and startup support.
• Advanced research: A standing pool for faculty and student projects.
• Emerging technologies: A fund aimed at tools and methods that are still arriving.

Kinshuk, already pictured as dean of the named college, said the breadth matters because it hits students, faculty, research, and partnerships at once. “What makes this gift extraordinary is that it gives us the ability to think bigger about every part of the student and faculty experience,” he said. “Our goal is not simply to teach students how to use new technologies. We want them to understand them, question them and be prepared to shape what those technologies become.”

The College of Information Gets an AI Name

This is not a greenfield school on empty land. UNT said the college will pull together programs already on campus: artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data science, advanced analytics, health informatics, information science, library science, and learning technologies.

In coordination with the provost, the college is being organized into two divisions, plus a new institute. The Division of Applied Intelligence and Informatics is supposed to build and deploy intelligent systems, covering AI, cybersecurity, data science, advanced analytics, and health informatics. The Division of Information and Learning Applications is supposed to study how those systems work inside human and institutional settings, and that is where information science, library science, and learning technologies are being parked.

The Applied Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Institute is meant to connect that work across UNT, share infrastructure, chase outside research money, and bring in industry partners. On the College of Information site, the new college name already sits in the header. The rebadge is underway even before the party.

UNT still carries a national reputation in music, and some graduates will read an AI college as a turn away from that identity. Library science and learning technologies now live under an AI masthead, which is a branding choice as much as an academic one.

State Research Money Can Multiply the Endowments

UNT’s own announcement tied the gift to the Texas University Fund, the state pool for public research universities that sit outside the Permanent University Fund that feeds the University of Texas and Texas A&M systems. Under Texas University Fund eligibility rules, a school must average about $20 million a year in federal and private research, award an average of 45 research doctorates, and not be PUF-eligible.

UNT INSIDE THE TEXAS UNIVERSITY FUND

• The club: The Coordinating Board lists the University of Houston, UNT, Texas Tech University, and Texas State University as TUF schools.
• FY2025 payout: Coordinating Board figures put UNT’s TUF distribution at $29,122,890, with a three-year research average of $28,908,059 and 284 doctorates, at Level 2.
• The next rung: A February 4, 2026 eligibility memo said UNT could move from PEER Base Level 2 to Level 1 funding.
• The wager: Private endowments can be stacked on top of that state research money to hire faculty and chase grants.

That is a different Texas bet from the one in Austin. Michael and Susan Dell have already recorded lifetime giving past $1 billion to UT Austin, including an AI-native medical campus. The Sinhas are buying a working college at a TUF campus for $20 million plus the two earlier gifts, and they are doing it at workforce scale rather than hospital scale.

UNT President Harrison Keller said the college advances the Look North: UNT 2030 plan on labor markets, research, and value for North Texas. “Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how we work, conduct research and solve problems, and universities have an important responsibility to help shape what comes next,” he said.

Anuradha and Vikas Sinha are paying opportunity forward with a $20M gift to establish UNT’s new College of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Analytics. I’m grateful for their belief in our students and UNT’s role in shaping what comes next. https://t.co/Nk2YEqz3ol pic.twitter.com/rDqJzbeC5M

— Harrison Keller, Ph.D. (@UNTPrez) September 8, 2026

An AI Bachelor’s Is Already in Class

UNT’s College of Engineering is already running a Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence. The department’s program page calls UNT one of the only public universities in Texas to offer a standalone AI bachelor’s, with a four-year plan that began in July and Fall 2026 classes that opened August 17.

Students are supposed to learn to design, build, and deploy AI software and systems, and to weigh social and governing effects. Listed job paths include AI engineer, machine learning engineer, governance specialist, and product manager. University spokesperson Devynn Case said that bachelor’s, now housed in Engineering, will move into the new college.

The naming, then, is catching a degree that is already in session. Keller has also talked about tying teaching to Texas employers. The college’s job, on paper, is to put those undergraduates, the data science department, the innovation lab, and the older information programs under one roof with a research institute attached.

He Wants the College to Train Stewards Too

Vikas did not describe the gift as a tech-industry recruiting poster. He described a college that would produce people who can build intelligent systems and people who can question them.

Anu and I see this as an investment in what students will be able to imagine and accomplish in the years ahead. Artificial intelligence will be one of the defining technologies of our generation, and universities have an essential role to play in preparing the people who will shape its future. What excites us about UNT’s vision is that this college will go beyond teaching students how to use AI. It will prepare them to build it, understand it, question it, govern it and apply it responsibly, developing both the builders and the stewards of intelligent systems.

Vikas Sinha, vice president, Broadcom Mainframe Software Division, UNT announcement

He also put immigrants in the middle of the speech, not as a side note. “Education changed the trajectory of my life,” he said. “When I came to America as an international student, someone invested in me before they knew what I might someday accomplish.” He added that the gift is about paying that chance forward, “recognizing that immigrants don’t simply participate in the American dream, they help build it.”

Keller picked up the same line, saying international students contribute ideas, companies, jobs, and later chances for people who follow them. Brandon Buzbee, UNT’s vice president for University Advancement, said the couple “have taken something they believe deeply in, the power of education to change lives, and built a legacy around extending that opportunity to others.”

In 2024, Vikas had already named Anu as the backbone of the family’s giving, and thanked their son Suraj and Suraj’s then-fiancée Sneha Thakkar. The college that now carries two first names is a family project, funded from a mainframe payroll, aimed at a public campus in Denton, and timed to a state research fund that can stretch a private endowment if the faculty hires and grants actually arrive.

The name is on the college. The party is still ahead. The bachelor’s students are already in the room.