Caltech will rename its medical engineering department after receiving a $30 million gift from Andrew and Peggy Cherng, the husband and wife founders of the Panda Restaurant Group, which owns Panda Express.

The Andrew and Peggy Cherng Department of Medical Engineering is the first of the university’s departments to be named and endowed, according to Caltech.

For the Cherngs, the decision to donate came from a desire to give back to a community that supported their family’s business from the beginning. The first Panda Inn was started by Andrew and his father, Chef Ming-Tsai Cherng, in Pasadena in 1973.

They now operate more than 2,000 Panda Express restaurants across the country and around the world.

“As immigrants, we benefited a lot from this country,” said Peggy Cherng, a member of Caltech’s board of trustees since 2012. “We truly want to promote the spirit of giving and paying it forward.”

The Cherngs agreed to have their name attached to the department in the hopes of inspiring others, particularly in the Chinese community, to follow in their footsteps, Peggy Cherng said.

The co-chief executive officer of Panda came from the engineering world, first working in the aerospace industry before she joining the family business in 1982. She used her engineering background to streamline operations at the restaurants.

“Andrew and Peggy Cherng’s story is a quintessential example of success rooted in Pasadena and impact felt across the world,” said Caltech president Thomas Rosenbaum in a statement. “In the same way, their extraordinary gift to support the country’s first medical engineering department here at Caltech will enable new discoveries and cures, rippling out to improve human lives everywhere.”

Caltech’s medical engineering department applies engineering principles to health issues to create devices and systems that will lead to “cheaper, more effective and more accessible health care.”

“The payout will be used to support research and education in the department; it will help support people, ideas, instruments,” said Ravi Ravichandran, leadership chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “It will impact lives.”

A portion of the endowment is set aside so the department head can flexibly and quickly advance the most promising projects and initiatives.

Researchers at Caltech work closely with the Keck School of Medicine at USC, the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Huntington Memorial Hospital and the City of Hope. The Chenrgs have a person connection to City of Hope as Ming-Tsai Cherng received care there in 1981.

The family has a long history of giving back. Panda Cares, the philanthropic arm of Panda Restaurant Group that supports health care, education and disaster relief, raised $21 million through guest donations at restaurants in 2016.