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Caltech

This page was published on October 1, 2021 to accompany a news story about the end of Caltech's Break Through campaign.

During the Break Through campaign, six donors—including one anonymous donor—made transformational investments of $100 million or more.

  • $750 million from senior trustee Stewart Resnick and his wife, Lynda Resnick, to augment the Resnick Sustainability Institute (RSI)
    • This historic commitment is the largest gift in Caltech's history and, at the time it was made, the largest ever given for environmental sustainability research and the second largest ever to a U.S. academic institution.
    • RSI advances global sustainability through transformational science, engineering, and education, and prioritizes research across campus that addresses diverse challenges and opportunities associated with climate change and the stewardship of natural resources. Fundamental insights gained are directed toward implementation and scale-up for real-world impact.
    • The pledge supports four core initiatives focused on climate science, global ecology and biosphere engineering, sunlight to everything, and water resources, as well as a new 75,000-square-foot building that will provide teaching laboratories and state-of-the-art spaces for interdisciplinary and translational research.
  • $139+ million from the estate of Allen V. C. Davis to provide endowed support for faculty
    • To date, the gift from the Davis estate has enabled Caltech to create three endowed professorships:
      • Seymour Benzer Professorship of Biology
      • Robert F. Christy Professorship
      • George Ellery Hale Professorship
    • Funds from the Davis estate also helped to endow seven leadership chairs:
      • Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, Caltech Brain Imaging Center
      • Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, Center for Environmental Microbial Interactions
      • Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, Institute for Quantum Science and Technology
      • Allen V.C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, Keck Institute for Space Science
      • Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, Richard N. Merkin Institute for Translational Research
      • Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, Student Affairs
      • Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience Leadership Chair
    • Additional funds from this gift remain to be allocated. These new chairs and professorships will strengthen Caltech's competitive edge in recruiting and retaining world-leading faculty for generations to come.
  • $137 million in unrestricted support from Gordon Moore (PhD '54) and Betty Moore, life members of the Caltech community
    • Unrestricted gifts provide lasting resources coupled with uncommon freedom. By entrusting the choice of how to direct the funds to Institute leadership, the Moores have helped ensure that Caltech has funds at the ready to apply wherever they will have the greatest impact.
    • Caltech used $100 million from the Moores' contributions to establish the Gordon and Betty Moore Graduate Fellowship Match, which provides one additional dollar for every two dollars pledged to endow Institute-wide fellowships. By inspiring others to give, the $100 million Moore Match increased fellowship support for Caltech by a total of $300 million.
  • $115 million from first-time donors Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen to create the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech
    • The Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience catalyzes a campus-wide interdisciplinary community of neuroscientists, biologists, chemists, physicists, engineers, computer scientists, and social scientists to deepen our understanding of the brain, including how it works at the most basic level as well as how it fails because of disease or through the aging process.
    • Further strengthening this work, the state-of-the-art Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Neuroscience Research Building, opened in 2021, provides a campus nexus for neuroscience research at Caltech.
  • $100 million from Donald Bren, a life member of the Caltech community, and his wife, Caltech trustee Brigitte Bren to launch the Space-Based Solar Power Project and support endowed professorships
    • The Space-Based Solar Power Project has the goal of providing energy 24/7 by generating solar power in space and beaming it to Earth.
    • Project researchers will soon conduct a test launch of multifunctional technology-demonstrator prototypes that collect sunlight and convert it to electrical energy, transfer the energy wirelessly in free-space using radio frequency (RF) electrical power, and deploy ultralight structures that will be used to integrate them.
    • The Brens' gift also includes generous support for faculty in space-based solar power as well as the life sciences (with a focus on bioengineering) and information science and technology (including quantum information and computing). Endowed Bren Professorships have made it possible for Caltech to attract and support outstanding senior as well as junior faculty and build out diverse teams of researchers with complementary skills in important disciplines that promise wide-ranging benefits for society.