SMITHFIELD, RI—Bryant University is pleased to announce a generous gift from Frank ’81 and Marion Hauck ’81, P’08 to establish the Hauck AI Performance Labs, a signature investment that will accelerate Bryant’s leadership in applied, responsible artificial intelligence.
The gift will advance Bryant’s Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence by combining secure, high-performance AI infrastructure with experiential learning, faculty innovation, and corporate engagement. Located in the Business Entrepreneurship Leadership Center, the Hauck AI Performance Labs will connect the Artificial Intelligence Lab, Data Science Lab, and Data Visualization Lab into one applied innovation platform.
“This generous gift from Frank and Marion represents the very best of Bryant’s alumni community, highlighting their ongoing commitment to educating future leaders and ensuring our students are at the forefront of innovation in a world being transformed by AI,” says President Ross Gittell, Ph.D. “The Hauck AI Performance Labs will be a powerful resource where students and faculty are at the frontier of advancing performance and learning across professions and disciplines in the AI-enabled economy. This investment will help Bryant prepare graduates who are not only ready to succeed in a rapidly changing environment, but also to shape AI’s impact for years to come."
Through the gift, Bryant will invest in a powerful applied AI technology stack, including upgraded GPU workstations, NVIDIA GPU accelerators, GPU server nodes, dedicated cooling and rack infrastructure, high-performance networking, enterprise AI software, model access, security integration, and licensed datasets. These capabilities will support advanced AI experimentation, instruction, content generation, analytics, applied research, corporate projects, and AI-focused innovation challenges and hackathons.
Together, these investments will create a secure AI sandbox where students, faculty, staff, and industry partners can explore, prototype, and apply AI solutions in a setting designed for enterprise expectations around speed, privacy, reliability, and responsible use. The platform will also position Bryant to respond to agentic AI, as organizations shift from stand-alone tools to systems capable of coordinating multi-step work across functions.
“The gift accelerates Bryant’s thought leadership and hands-on learning with AI, ensuring the university has the applied AI infrastructure, culture of experimentation, and industry-facing platform our students need,” says Frank Hauck. “Organizations are moving from AI pilots to implementation, and Bryant will be where students and partners test ideas, understand risk, and turn AI into practical value. Marion and I believe this investment will help set Bryant apart among peer institutions and advance its role as a leader in applied AI education.”
Marion Hauck added, “Given our strong ties to Bryant and its long commitment to hands-on learning experiences and interdisciplinary education, this gift represents our hope to build on that legacy and establish Bryant as a national model for responsible AI adoption in higher education. The Hauck AI Performance Labs will give students access to collaborative, technology-enabled spaces where they can work across disciplines, ask better questions, and prepare to lead in a world reshaped by AI.”
The Hauck AI Performance Labs will also include enhancements designed to foster AI collaboration and visibility, including improvements to the AI Lab, and project and collaboration rooms. Selected robotics and VR/XR tools will support exploratory work in embodied AI, simulation, human-computer interaction, immersive learning, and emerging modes of business and industry collaboration.
“I’m grateful to Frank and Marion for their deep commitment to empowering Bryant students to engage with AI through our foundation of experiential learning, cross-disciplinary exploration, and industry collaboration,” says Provost and Chief Academic Officer Rupendra Paliwal, Ph.D. “This investment gives Bryant a peer-differentiating applied AI platform with secure on-premises compute, high-performance GPU capacity, enterprise model access, licensed datasets, immersive and robotics tools, and purpose-built spaces for experiential learning and industry collaboration. More importantly, it aligns technology with Bryant’s educational mission. We are preparing students to build, evaluate, govern, and apply AI systems with the judgment, ethics, and practical skill required in the AI-enabled economy.”
The Hauck AI Performance Labs will provide a physical and intellectual home for applied AI, data science, and visualization at Bryant, uniting curriculum, research, operations, and industry engagement so that students and professionals learn by doing, testing, and solving real problems. By embedding privacy, transparency, bias awareness, and the future of work into its AI innovation ecosystem, Bryant is positioning itself as a regional hub for applied AI education, workforce development, and thought leadership.
About Bryant University
For 163 years, Bryant University has been at the forefront of delivering an exceptional education that anticipates the future and prepares students to be innovative leaders of character in a changing world. The university delivers an integrated academic and student life experience, with nationally recognized academic programs at the intersection of business, liberal arts, and health and behavioral sciences, while embedding applied artificial intelligence and experiential learning across the curriculum.
Located on a 465-acre contemporary campus in Smithfield, R.I., Bryant enrolls over 4,000 undergraduate and graduate students from 41 states and 50 countries. Bryant is recognized as a top one percent national leader in student education outcomes and ROI and is highly ranked by U.S. News and World Report, The Wall Street Journal, QS Stars, Money, Poets&Quants, and College Factual. Bryant.edu