Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center has received a $400 million donation from Roy Vagelos, a former pharmaceutical CEO, and his wife, Diana Vagelos, the university announced Thursday.
The donation will expand the Roy and Diana Vagelos Institute for Basic Biomedical Science, which was opened in 2023 through a donation from the Vageloses. The couple, who met when they studied at Columbia’s medical school and Barnard College, respectively, have donated a total of $900 million to Columbia since 2010, according to the medical news site STAT. Thursday’s donation is the largest ever made to the medical school, and the Vageloses are the most prolific donors in Columbia’s history.
The Vagelos Institute aims to allow Ph.D. students to pursue “the most creative, potentially disruptive ideas in biomedical science and also encourage the training of more physician-scientists,” according to a previous university news release. The $400 million gift will also go toward the construction of a new biomedical research building, the Vagelos Innovation Laboratories, on the university’s medical campus.
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Source: Inside Higher Ed
