Major foundations advance UC Irvine initiatives

 

Many of the world's most prestigious foundations support UC Irvine's work to shape the future in areas of national and global importance to make a positive impact on humanity.

 

Here are some of the most recent grants to UC Irvine that support our work in health care and address global challenges.

 

Setting the pace in digital media

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

The development of digital technologies that provide new ways for people to read, write, communicate, and understand is the focus of a $2.97 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to UC Irvine. The campus has an international reputation in the field of digital media and learning.  The grant promotes new forms of learning making use of digital media both inside and outside the classroom. The UC Irvine effort will look at ways to digitally gather and analyze information and explore how new technology can improve how we produce and share knowledge and learn.

 

Managing money when you have little to spare

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grant

Everyone needs safe ways to manage their money—especially people with little to spare.  Poor people in developing countries engage in financial transactions on a daily basis. Throughout the world people need to pay for food, medical care, and schooling, run small businesses, and protect themselves against risks such as illness and drought. New technology also offers people access to a broader a range of financial services.  UC Irvine Professor Bill Maurer, Department of Anthropology, School of Social Science studies the anthropology of money. Maurer recently won a $1.7 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to examine money’s social roles and meanings for those in developing countries who live on less than $1 per day.

 

Improving geriatric care across medicine

Donald W. Reynolds Grant

UC Irvine School of Medicine’s $2 million grant from The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, strengthen physicians’ geriatrics training across the United States. The UC Irvine grant is part of a $20 million program by the foundation. Over the past decade, the Program in Geriatrics led by Laura Mosqueda, M.D., Professor of Clinical Family Medicine and Ronald W. Reagan Endowed Chair, Geriatrics, has built relationships and worked with a multitude of UC Irvine departments to include geriatrics content to new areas of medicine and education.  Geriatrics faculty are focusing their $2 million project on the “Return to the Patient-Doctor Relations,” with the enthusiastic inclusion of the departments of anesthesiology, emergency medicine, psychiatry, family medicine, internal medicine and oncology.  The funds will implement geriatrics issues in both their undergraduate and graduate education programs, using the geriatrics competencies developed by the American Association of Medical Colleges.  The University of Arizona is a collaborator, as is Vanderbilt University. The project will use innovative informatics technology as a basis for a database to tract the impact of the new curriculum on learners.

 

Seeing the hope of stem cells

Lincy Foundation

FDA approval for the first clinical trial involving human embryonic stem cell therapy at UC Irvine has brought worldwide attention to the promise of stem cell-based therapies to treat, and potentially cure, devastating diseases. This first clinical trial is handled in multiple locations by Geron Corporation of Menlo Park and is based on the work pioneered in the lab of Hans Keirstead, Ph.D. at UC Irvine.  Within the last year, Los Angeles-based The Lincy Foundation donated more than $1 million to Dr. Keirstead for his work in stem cell therapies aimed at curing macular degeneration—the leading cause of age-related blindness throughout the world.  The foundation was incorporated by Kirk Kerkorian, a successful Las Vegas businessman who establishing many Las Vegas landmark hotels after World War II. Kerkorian later became a MGM movie mogul and later still a major General Motors stakeholder.   Mr. Kerkorian is also a prominent philanthropist who named the foundation after his two daughters; Linda and Tracy. The grant supports experiments to develop human embryonic stem cells into three-dimensional tissue constructs of retinal progenitor cells that could potentially be used restore vision in retinal degeneration models. 

 

Causes of Alzheimer’s in the crosshairs

The Larry L. Hillblom Foundation

Among the most exciting biomedical research projects at UC Irvine is work underway in the laboratories of Charles Glabe, Ph.D.  Dr. Glabe is Professor of Cell and Molecular Biosciences in the School of Biological Sciences.  His is developing antibodies targeted at “amyloid Aß oligomers,” the pathological agent most likely to spark Alzheimer’s disease (AD).  In layman terms, amyloid Aß oligomers are cable-like strings of cellulose protein that grow, spread and impede function all along the nervous system and in the brain.  Dr. Glabe’s research on the biology of aging was supported this year by a $1 million grant from The Larry L. Hillblom Foundation, which supports the creation of new therapies to treat degenerative diseases. 

 

Interested in learning more about supporting this important work at UC Irvine?

Contact:  Jim Crawford, Senior Director Foundation Development, 949-824-7455 or crawforj@uci.edu