Vinod Khosla, general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, announced a $5 million donation to his alma mater, IIT Delhi.

The gift is the largest by any individual to IIT, Delhi. 'Fundamental research is needed to dramatically improve Information Technology,' said Khosla in an interview at the IIT 50^th anniversary celebration.

The fund will go towards building a new IT school with new buildings, new faculty, and new course said Khosla.

Avi Nash, advisory director, Goldman Sachs, too announced a $1 million donation to the chemical engineering department at IIT Bombay for research laboratories, endowments for chair professorships and awards for faculty and student excellence.

Other IIT alumni who have given back to their alma mater include N R Narayana Murthy, Chairman, Infosys Technologies; Nandan Nilekani, CEO, Infosys; Vinod Gupta, chairman, InfoUSA; Rajesh Mashruwala, COO, Tibco Software; Suhas Patil, chairman emeritus, Cirrus Logic; Arjun Malhotra, CEO, TechSpan; Purnendu Chatterjee, founder, Chatterjee Group; Desh Deshpande, chairman, Sycamore; Prabhu Goel, chairman, iPolicy Networks; Girish Gaitonde, CEO, Xoriant; and Umang Gupta, CEO, Keynote Systems.

IIT-50 Celebrations in Silicon Valley