According to the couple, the project will fund a $600 million research center in San Francisco called the Biohub, in a partnership with the University of California, San Francisco, Stanford University and Berkeley.
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Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are committing $3 billion over the next 10 years to accelerate basic scientific research, including the creation of research tools – from software to hardware to yet-undiscovered techniques – they hope will ultimately lead to scientific breakthroughs, the way the microscope and DNA sequencing have in generations past. “It may be a stretch goal to say we’ll do it by the end of the century, but its certainly not completely unrealistic”, Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne said. The announcement was also a coming out of sorts for Chan, who has a big interest in health and was trained in pediatrics.
While the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has already made investments in charter schools and education startups, the money toward curing diseases represents the group’s first major initiative in science.
“I have worked with families at their most hard moments in their lives, from making the devastation diagnosis of leukaemia to sharing with them that we were unable to resuscitate their child”, she said.
“I have no doubt that we’ll make great progress on these diseases and literally save millions of lives and make the world a better place”. “By investing in science today, we hope to build a future in which all of our children can live long and rewarding lives”.
She also added “In those moments and many others we’re at the limit of what we understand about the human body and disease, the science behind medicine, the limit of our ability to alleviate suffering”. The University of Pittsburgh recruited more than 400 overweight and obese young adults. Engineering has always been key to tool development.
When the pledge was unveiled in December 2015, it was valued at $45bn. It will likely take years for the first tools to be developed through this initiative, and even longer before they are used to cure diseases.
“The more people believe we can cure all disease in our children’s lifetimes, the more likely the government is to invest in it, and the more likely we are to achieve this goal”. It was Maxs birth last November that inspired the billionaire couple to give away almost all their money to help solve the worlds problems. The couples philanthropy plan wont affect Zuckerbergs status as controlling shareholder of Facebook.
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Microsoft billionaire turned global philanthropist Bill Gates, who took part in Wednesday’s opening event, praised Zuckerberg and Chan for taking on a “very bold, very ambitious” challenge.
