Li Ka-shing bets on Israeli science institute to build new technology school in Guangdong

Tycoon Li Ka-shing has donated US$130 million to a top Israeli science institute to help build a campus in his home town in Guangdong province in a joint project with Shantou University.

The donation offered to Technion - the Israel Institute of Technology - from charitable organisation the Li Ka Shing Foundation is the largest ever to the institute and "one of the most generous in the history of Israeli higher education", a statement from the foundation and the 101-year-old institute said. It was also one of the biggest one-off donations made by the foundation.

The statement said the new school, dubbed the Technion Guangdong Institute of Technology (TGIT), would represent "unprecedented co-operation" between Technion, Shantou University, Guangdong's provincial government and the Shantou municipal government.

The two governments will set aside 900 million yuan (HK$1.1 billion) to fund TGIT's construction and initial operations, and a 330,000 square metre site for a campus next to Shantou University.

TGIT will begin offering undergraduate programmes in civil and environmental engineering and computer sciences in the 2014 academic year.

By 2020, it will offer programmes in other engineering-related fields, from mechanical to aerospace engineering.