MIT Awarded $350 Million to Start Brain Research Center
WESTPORT, Feb 29 (Reuters Health) - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has announced the creation of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research through a gift from International Data Group founder and Chairman Patrick J. McGovern, Jr., and his wife, Lore Harp McGovern.
According to an MIT statement released on Monday, the university expects to receive $350 million over the next 20 years from the McGoverns, which would make the gift the largest ever to a university for scientific research. The McGoverns said that they decided to devote funds for brain research because they believe that researchers in neuroscience are poised to make major advances in understanding the human mind and behavior.
The institute expects to support interdisciplinary research encompassing neuroscience, molecular neurobiology, bioengineering, cognitive sciences, computation and genetics.
Patrick McGovern graduated in 1959 from MIT and has been a member of the university's board of trustees since 1989. "We hope that the interdisciplinary research at the McGovern Institute will lead to improvements in receiving, analyzing, associating, storing, retrieving and communicating information," he said in the MIT statement.
He added, "We hope the research at the McGovern Institute will be able to expand the understanding of the processes controlling human perception, memory, emotions and communication."
Lore McGovern has served as chair of the board of associates at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research for the last 3 years.
Dr. Phillip A. Sharp of MIT, who won the Nobel Prize in 1993 for his discovery of surplus DNA and gene splicing, will serve as founding director of the McGovern Institute. Dr. Sharp will assemble a team of 16 investigators for the institute, including 10 new faculty members. |
