Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, announced that they will be investing $3 billion over 10 years to build tools to advance health care – cure, prevent and manage all diseases by the end of the century.
The evening started with Priscilla Chan talking about how she came to America and studied to become the Paediatrician that she is now.
She talked about the need to build tools to advance healthcare. According to Chan, “We’ll be investing in basic science research with the goal of curing disease”
She talked about setting up a project to bring together teams of scientists and engineers “to build new tools for the scientific community”
She said that the project, Chan Zuckerberg Science would be led by Cori Bargmann, a neuroscientist and geneticist.
The first investment from the $3 billion is a new $600 million research center called Biohub. This will be in partnership with scientists and researchers from Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of California, San Francisco.
The Biohub will focus on building new tools to understand and treat disease.
Mark Zuckerberg then came on stage to to identify the core health problems facing the world, and how the new program will address them.
The majority of deaths are caused by heart disease, infectious disease, neurological disease, and cancer, so those are the areas where the program will concentrate its efforts.
The roadmap for the program includes three parts:
- Bring scientists and engineers together
- Build tools and technology
- Grow the movement to fund science
Mark concluded the event by introducing his mentor and philanthropic inspiration, Bill Gates, who called the initiative “very bold, very ambitious”.
“Their vision and generosity is inspiring a whole new generation of philantropists who will do amazing things. We’re proud to say that we were here when Mark and Priscilla started this journey.”
