Posted on October 15, 2009

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Princeton Receives $25 Million to Advance Science Through Transformative Technologies

Princeton University has announced a $25 million gift from Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, to create an endowment fund that will support the invention, development, and utilization of cutting-edge technologies with the potential to transform research in the natural sciences and engineering.

The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund will provide Princeton faculty members with money to use in inventing or implementing new technologies that can have a major impact on a field of research or to acquire a piece of equipment or an enabling technology that could change the direction of research in a field. Funds for one or multiple years will be distributed through campus-wide, peer-reviewed competitions overseen by the university's dean for research, A.J. Stewart Smith. In turn, Smith will have discretion to recommend that no grants be awarded in years when there are no sufficiently compelling proposals and to spend down principal in years when there are many compelling ideas. The first competition will be announced later this fall.

Eric Schmidt earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Princeton in 1976 and served as a Princeton trustee from 2004 to 2008.

"While progress in science and engineering can be catalyzed by entirely new theoretical insights, it is more often the case that revolutionary advances spring from the arrival on the scene of new technologies that allow investigators to explore unresolved questions with new tools, or to ask previously unapproachable questions," said Princeton University president Shirley M. Tilghman. "This fund will allow Princeton's scientists and engineers to explore truly innovative ideas that need the creation or application of new technologies, including the kinds of technological breakthroughs that most funding sources are too risk-averse to support."

“Schmidt Fund to Advance Science Through Support for Transformative Technology.” Princeton University Press Release 10/13/09.

Primary Subject: Education
Secondary Subject(s): Higher Education, Science/Technology
Location(s): National

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