University of California Santa Cruz received $8.5 million from an anonymous donor in support of the organization's genomics institute.
The financial gift, which will be dispersed in annual installments over the next 10 years, will establish the Healthier World Fund for the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute. It will support various biomedical research projects at the Genomics Institute, including developing advanced technologies and open-source genomics platforms to assess underpinnings of disease, molecular patterns and evolutionary patterns.
Researchers at UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute worked on the international Human Genome Project in 2000, assembling the first working draft of the human genome sequence.
"[The donation is a substantial step forward for us to have this kind of long-term funding," said David Haussler, director of the Genomics Institute, according to the news release. "This wonderful gift coincides with major new grants from the National Institutes of Health and our official establishment as an organized research unit of the campus. It feels like the culmination of 20 years of genomics work here at UC Santa Cruz."