Chan Zuckerberg Commits $500 Million to Harvard Neuroscience and AI Institute

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative co-founders and co-CEOs Mark Zuckerberg '06, L.L.D. '17 and Priscilla Chan '07, announced today a gift to establish the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard. The new institute, which will have dedicated space in the recently completed Science and Engineering Complex in Allston (see "A 500-Year Building"), is named after Karen Kempner Zuckerberg, the mother of the Meta CEO and founder (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are Meta Platforms Inc.'s best-known apps) and her parents. According to Jeff MacGregor, vice president of science communications for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the Kempner Institute will receive $500 million in funding during the next 15 years. The gift will support 10 new faculty appointments, new computing infrastructure, and resources for students--from undergraduates to post-doctoral fellows--that will allow them to pursue knowledge in an uninhibited way across labs and disciplines. Zuckerberg and Chan, a pediatrician, will donate an additional $2.9 billion to support biomedical research focused on improving human health, with the aim of ultimately ending all human disease.