College Park’s Discovery District has landed a Fortune 500 tenant: Capital One.

The McLean-based financial services company will open a 7,500-square-foot innovation lab in March or April on the first floor of the 850-space garage in the Hotel at the University of Maryland, known as the Diamondback Garage.

The lab is part of a $3 million effort by Capital One to groom UMD students for jobs in data analytics, machine learning and cybersecurity, in part by giving them a place near campus to work on real-world problems.

Most of that money is going toward endowing a faculty chair for the computer science department. The state’s Department of Commerce also recently chipped in $2.1 million to hire two other professors and support research.

Capital One’s innovation lab shows how the university’s new game plan for driving development is coming together. It will be across Baltimore Avenue from the six-story Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Innovation, currently under construction, near the hotel and conference center and new student housing.

In the near future, a computer science student could walk from their apartment at the Varsity, take a class at the Iribe Center, walk across the street to grab a bagel and then head to an internship in the innovation lab.

Their boss might then walk over to the hotel to give a presentation at a computer science conference and then have a high-powered lunch at Old Maryland Grill before jumping on a Purple Line train.

The university has said this is a model for how it might work with other businesses, promising that more deals will be announced soon.

The new Hotel at the University of Maryland is part of College Park’s greater Discovery District, a technical and research hub formerly known as M Square Research Park and the Innovation District, which encompasses more than 150 acres and is aimed at helping to revitalize the Route 1 corridor.