Billionaire Paul Allen, philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft, has donated $100 million to Stanford University and Tufts University to be used to help the institutions create new research facilities for bioscience research over the course of the next 10 years. The donation is a part of his commitment to the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, a new Seattle-based organization that he founded on Wednesday.
Allen, a known investor, philanthropist, musician and inventor, is donating the money to both the universities as well as individual scientists in order to help them discover and invest in alternative methods for various scientific realms such as tissue regeneration, gene editing and antibiotic resistance. He believes that bioscience is of great importance for the functioning and future of the human race.
"What I believe is that this is potentially a game-changer for our understanding of complex biological system," he said.
Allan said that the his philanthropy in the field stems from his realization that the biological sciences have reached a critical point in history, where new tools and microscopes can be developed to analyze the tiniest parts of living things and manipulate genetics to amazing degrees.
The funding aims to provide researchers with alternative approaches to the field and help them connect computer scientists, engineers and physical scientists in order to bolster innovation.
"To make the kind of transformational advances we seek and thus shape a better future, we must invest in scientists willing to pursue what some might consider out-of-the-box approaches at the very edges of knowledge," Allen said. "Without risk, there is rarely significant reward, and unless we try truly novel approaches, we may never find the answers we seek."
Allen has donated over $2 billion to charitable causes and his nonprofit research group, the Allen Institute, launched an institute to study brain science in 2003 and another to study cell science in 2014. He is the 45th richest man in the world, with an estimated current net worth of $17.7 billion.
Along with Allen, numerous other tech industry pioneers are investing in scientific advances, including Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook and Sergey Brin from Google, both of whom teamed up to create Breakthrough Prize, a set of international awards for scientists in numerous fields.
