Facebook CEO’s Donation a Boon to Basic Science

But can $3 billion dollars meet the lofty goals of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative?

kerry grens
| 1 min read

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WIKIMEDIA, JERICHOThe Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a foundation launched by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, aims to stop all diseases over the next century, and do it with just a tenth of the money the National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends annually. The centerpiece of the initiative will be a new facility in San Francisco devoted to creating a molecular catalog of cell types in the body and developing better responses to infectious disease, ScienceInsider reported.

The unveiling of the initiative this week (September 21) was met with a fair amount of skepticism. Popular Science pointed out that the NIH and pharmaceutical companies spend 22 times as much in one year as CZI will over a decade. “None of this is to say that we shouldn’t applaud such a large financial commitment to research,” the article added. “Maybe the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will prove its critics wrong and provide the kind of innovation that the research community needs.”

What is particularly welcome to the life science community is the long view of CZI (100 years to accomplish its goals). “CZI plans to make it possible for large groups of scientists to focus on riskier projects that won't necessarily yield results for ...

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Meet the Author

  • kerry grens

    Kerry Grens

    Kerry served as The Scientist’s news director until 2021. Before joining The Scientist in 2013, she was a stringer for Reuters Health, the senior health and science reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, and the health and science reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio. Kerry got her start in journalism as a AAAS Mass Media fellow at KUNC in Colorado. She has a master’s in biological sciences from Stanford University and a biology degree from Loyola University Chicago.

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