Two Medical Institutions Receive Multimillion-Dollar Commitments
June 28, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Two universities have announced that they received gifts of more than $100-million apiece, with much of it for medical programs:
- Sanford I. Weill, chairman emeritus of Citigroup, and his wife, Joan, have announced that they are providing $250-million to Cornell University’s medical school in New York City. In addition, they are awarding Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., $50-million to finance research on genomics and other life sciences.
- An anonymous donor has pledged to give the University of California at San Francisco $150-million for clinical and research programs at the university’s Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Mr. Weill is an alumnus of Cornell and chairs the board of the medical school.
The Weills have previously given $215-million to the medical school, which in 1998 changed its name to the Weill Medical College in honor of their gifts.
“I have been very happy with the investments I have made in the school in the past,” says Mr. Weill. “Our gift and inspiration really comes from working on a very personal basis with a lot of doctors there for a lot of years.”
Cornell said that in addition to Mr. Weill, several other donors had made a total of $150-million in contributions to the medical school, which announced in October that it was seeking $1.3-billion in a capital campaign:
- A total of $100-million was provided by donors who wish to remain anonymous.
- Maurice and Corinne Greenberg, who donated $25-million, also donated $25-million from the Starr Foundation, their family fund. Mr. Greenberg is chief executive of C.V. Starr & Company, an investment firm, and former chairman of the American International Group.
The medical school said that, with the gifts announced this month, it had raised $650-million toward its goal.
The anonymous pledge to the San Francisco institution will be used to develop new cancer treatment drugs and clinical trials for patients, to establish a database to track cancer patients’ responses to therapy and their recovery, and to support other cancer-center programs.
