Tech entrepreneur donates $40M for new USF AI, cybersecurity school

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Arnie Bellini, a tech entrepreneur and investor who runs Bellini Capital, has donated $40 million to the University of South Florida’s soon-to-open artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and computing college.

This record investment gives Bellini naming rights to the new college, according to the Tampa Bay Business Journal, which first reported on the gift. 

According to USF, the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing will produce job-ready professionals in its field of study. 

“The Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing provides opportunities for all of our colleges and disciplines to cross academic boundaries and to tackle complex challenges,” said USF Provost and Executive Vice President Prasant Mohapatra, whose research includes how AI can track online social network trends. “This is where scholars from nursing, business, ethics, the arts and more can leverage technological advances, especially related to AI.”

The $40 million gift is already the largest in USF’s history, but Bellini told the Business Journal he hopes to make it even bigger. He plans to raise an additional $10 million for the school and will match up to $5 million of the funds raised. Bellini says the additional investment will help recruit top talent, including professors and students. 

The school has been in the works since at least March 2024, when USF announced plans for “a college focused on the rapidly evolving fields of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and computing, with the goal of positioning the Tampa Bay region and state of Florida as a national leader.”

According to Dean Sudeep Sarkar, the college will use a “hub-and-spoke model” to foster university-wide collaboration. Sarkar’s research focuses on computer vision, an AI field that teaches computers to process and analyze visual data. 

Its model will put the college at the center of several other disciplines, including the arts, medicine, humanities, education, business, global security, and science. Plans are in place for the eventual inclusion of interdisciplinary majors in computer science along with one of the other hub-and-spoke specialties. 

“The idea is that the students can be hired by a tech firm that doesn’t specialize in their interdisciplinary field,” Sarkar said. “But the students will learn how to leverage computer science and artificial intelligence to improve work in the interdisciplinary field.”

The disciplines will work together in various ways. For example, social science researchers and students can use AI to track trends related to fake news and doctored photographs to study how they influence groups and provide technology that helps determine false information. Likewise, those studying psychology could use AI and effective computing to recognize and respond to human emotions. In business, the school would provide eye-tracking technology and expression sensors to monitor responses to videos, a tool that could help create more effective advertising and marketing strategies. 

“We share resources because they can be used for research in both disciplines, and we figured, why buy two sets of eye trackers?” said Triparna de Vreede, an assistant professor at Muma College of Business’ School of Information Systems and Management. “There will be more collaborations like this when we have the new college.”

Vreede is focusing current research on employee interaction with AI in the workplace. 

“How does someone respond to AI? How does AI change their behavior?” de Vreede said. “I look at how AI can be designed so that we have the best work performance.”

While de Vreede will remain with the Muma College of Business, she will also participate in the new college to enhance both her work and that of the new school.