Gift from Pantas Sutardja and Ting Chuk Renames the Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology

The benefactors, both graduates of Berkeley Engineering, have initiated a challenge to any donor to match their gift to the Pantas and Ting Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. The new gift will extend the Sutardja Center’s course offerings to a broader range of students, from first-year undergraduates to graduate students. The gift will also open up the Sutardja Center’s Venture Lab incubator to more student-led initiatives.

“We are profoundly grateful to Pantas and Ting for investing in the aspirations of our students,” said S. Shankar Sastry, Dean and Carlson Professor of Engineering. “Their generosity will magnify the impact of our students’ career paths by fostering entrepreneurial practice and by translating technological expertise into marketplace innovation.”

The center began as a single course in 2005 and developed into a robust program of courses and lectures that now serve more than 1,000 students each semester. It has led dozens of successful student startups throughout the years. Among them is Eko Devices, which recently closed a $2 million funding round for its digital stethoscope attachment.

Professor Ikhlaq Sidhu, Director Ken Singer, and IEOR Department Chair Phil Kaminsky designed the “Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship” to teach students how to launch and sustain technology ventures. Lauded as a national model by the National Science Foundation, the curriculum uses game-based learning to encourage an entrepreneurial mindset.

Pantas Sutardja (B.S. ’83, M.S.’85, Ph.D. ’88 EECS) is the cofounder of Marvell Technology Group, a semiconductor company with operations worldwide. Ting Chuk (B.S. ’85 EECS) was a design engineer at Rockwell and Xerox, among other companies. The two are active in the life of the College of Engineering and were cornerstone benefactors to CITRIS (the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society), a multi-campus institute headquartered at Berkeley Engineering. Their two sons are currently undergraduate students in the college.

“We heard about the CET program and were so curious to learn more about it that we sat in on one of their classes,” said Pantas Sutardja. “We were very impressed with the enthusiasm of all the students and their ability to articulate and present their projects. Berkeley has such strong academic credentials. We hope that our support will enable more Berkeley students to take what they learn here and create a culture of innovation wherever they go.”