Alumnus donates $6.5 million to UIC bioengineering department

BY SANDRA GUY Technology/Higher Education Reporter September 12, 2013 11:36AM

Updated: September 12, 2013 6:05PM

A South Side natives $6.5 million donation to the University of Illinois at Chicago bioengineering department will fund new ways of preventing, diagnosing and treating diseases by applying engineering to the field of medicine.

Bioengineering principles can bring about groundbreaking ways of doing stem-cell research and designing skin grafts, new organs and new DNA structures to fight cancer, said Rick Hill, 61, retired CEO of computer-chip manufacturing equipment company Novellus Inc., whose donation is the largest ever given to the bioengineering department.

Hill is a 1974 UIC bioengineering alumnus who grew up on Chicagos South Side and in south suburban Blue Island. He worked his way through college at summer jobs in steel mills, at a canning company and at Superior Match Company and the Ford stamping plant in Chicago Heights.

These are huge economic opportunities, Hill said of the research his donation will enable. UIC is a great jewel of the University of Illinois system. It is ideally located to allow collaboration between industry and the university to make these kinds of significant advances.

Hill and his wife, Loan, donated the $6.5 million on top of their earlier $2.3 million donation to UIC to recognize the bioengineering departments role in Rick Hills career and to encourage researchers to explore new ideas. The bioengineering department is run jointly by UICs colleges of engineering and medicine.

Hill serves on the UIC College of Engineerings advisory board and previously was chairman of the University of Illinois Foundation, the schools fundraising organization.

Hill said his bioengineering studies in the early 1970s gave him the resources to escape the force field of the South Side and achieve success.

Life has been very good to me, said Hill, who retired after selling San Jose, Calif.-based Novellus to Lam Research Corp. of Fremont, Calif., for $3.3 billion in December 2011. I always feel like giving back.

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Alumnus donates $6.5 million to UIC bioengineering department