The University of California, San Francisco announced on October 24 commitments of $740 million in donations toward the $1.4 billion goal of a multi-year, comprehensive fundraising campaign. The campaign promises to accelerate progress in teaching, biomedical research, clinical care and community health all areas in which the campus is a world leader.
At a Wednesday evening event, “A Celebration of Partners in Science and Health,� UCSF Chancellor J. Michael Bishop, MD, announced the total raised to date to a group of campus donors, faculty members and other supporters. Guests included Andrew Grove, chairman of Intel Corp. and national chair of The Campaign for UCSF, and Michael J. Fox, actor and advocate for medical research.
The event included tours of laboratories led by post-graduate researchers and faculty members, dinner under an enormous tent raised in a courtyard at the center of the Parnassus Avenue campus, and a special ceremony in which donors and other campus supporters received a white physician’s coat. Each year, incoming medical students receive their first white coats in a ceremony filled with tradition and inspiration, and the white coat ceremony for those attending the kickoff event recognized them as partners in UCSF’s health science mission.
The campaign will invest in programs with the greatest potential to advance scientific knowledge and improve human health.
“UCSF hasn’t merely participated in the development of modern biomedicine. It has been one of a handful of players that have shaped it,� Bishop said, noting that UCSF discoveries gave birth to biotechnology, advanced cancer science, gave hope to AIDS patients, and contributed path-breaking work in human genetics, organ transplantation, neurosciences, fetal surgery, and psychiatric medicine.
“Now, it is time for UCSF to take another leap forward,� Bishop said.
Along with Grove, who serves as national chair, campaign leaders include the following:
Chair Emeritus: A.W. Clausen, chairman and CEO (retired), Bank of America
Co-Chairs: Barbara Bass Bakar, former CEO of Emporium/Weinstocks and current chair of the UCSF Foundation; Brook Byers, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Arthur H. Kern, investor and civic volunteer; and William E. Oberndorf, managing director, SPO Partners & Co. and vice chair of the UCSF Foundation.
“Of the many ways I could spend my time and energy during the next several years, I can’t think of a more worthwhile investment than being part of this effort,� said Grove. “UCSF possesses a uniquely collaborative culture one that, in my opinion, represents humanity’s best hope for understanding and combating disease.�
The Campaign for UCSF will support initiatives the UCSF Schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy and the UCSF Graduate Division. They include the following:
MISSION BAY - The UCSF Mission Bay campus, located about a mile south of San Francisco’s Financial District, promises to maintain UCSF’s leadership in the next revolution in biomedical research.
Construction of the first laboratory building at UCSF Mission Bay began in 1999 and is scheduled for completion in 2002. Plans for the first phase of the new teaching and research campus also include a second research building, a Campus Community Center, the Institute for Bioengineering, Biotechnology and Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3) one of three new scientific institutes selected last year by Gov. Gray Davis housing for 700 students, and a campus green that will be larger than San Francisco’s Union Square.
Over the next two decades, the Mission Bay site will grow to include 2.65 million square feet of new space, doubling the amount of research space at UCSF.
Scientists at UCSF Mission Bay will focus on basic research intended to better understand human biology at a cellular and molecular level. Programs will include structural and computational biology; cellular, molecular and developmental biology; human genetics; neuroscience; bioengineering; and proteomics.
In announcing the total raised to date, the Chancellor noted that the effort already has met the goal needed for completion of the first phase of UCSF Mission Bay.
PARNASSUS HEIGHTS - With the relocation of basic science programs to Mission Bay’s first building, the vacated space will become available for new and existing programs at UCSF’s main campus site on Parnassus Avenue, overlooking Golden Gate Park. The campus is developing plans for a translational health sciences program, including the following six initiatives, at Parnassus Heights.
--Center for the Study of Immunological Diseases
--Center for the Study of Infectious Diseases
--Genetics of Complex Diseases and Therapeutics
--Program in Stem Cell Biology and Tissue Engineering
--Laboratory for Craniofacial Biology
--Sandler Center for Basic Research in Asthma
Chosen for their interdisciplinary nature and potential benefits to patients, these programs range from fundamental investigations of the origin of disease to advanced clinical trials in which patients have access to the latest and most promising treatments.
MOUNT ZION - To meet the needs and expand the potential of programs at UCSF/Mount Zion Medical Center, the campus plans a new 160,000-square-foot clinical research building at the site. The new building will support several research programs, including those of the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer.
New and existing programs targeted to benefit from new resources can be found at virtually every campus site, in every school and in a wide range of programs.
The campus also announced the names "leadership donors� who have agreed to give at least $5 million towards the development of the UCSF Mission Bay campus. They are the following:
--Gerson & Barbara Bakar
--Bank of America
--William & Ute Bowes
--Roger Evans
--Donald & Doris Fisher
--Genentech
--Eric & Carmel Greenberg
--Koret Foundation
--Nan Tucker McEvoy
--Sanford & Jeanne Robertson
--William Rutter
--Charles & Helen Schwab
--Wayne & Gladys Valley Foundation
--Alejandro C. Zaffaroni
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