After selling the virtual reality startup Oculus VR to Facebook for $2 billion, Brendan Iribe has a lot of money. The chief executive of Oculus VR, the maker of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, is using that money to make a $31 million gift to the University of Maryland.
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The gift is the largest in history for the university in College Park, Md. Iribe, a UMD alumnus, is giving the money to fund construction of the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Innovation, and the remaining $1 million will establish the Brendan Iribe Endowed Scholarship in Computer Science. The center will encourage the study of virtual reality, which is a 3D computing experience that immerses the participant in a believable virtual world.
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Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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