EMBARGO TIL 12/17 10AM
CONTACT: Mark Ferrell (WV)(304) 347-5501MAJOR NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH INSTITUTERECEIVES $15 MILLION PERSONAL CONTRIBUTION
MORGANTOWN, W.VA. -- The Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute, the world's only major research institute focusing on human memory, received a personal gift of $15 million today from the family of United States Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV). The Institute was established by Senator Rockefeller in December 1999 as an international medical research center focused on fundamental cognitive neuroscience. The research center was named in memory of Senator Rockefeller's mother, Blanchette Ferry Rockefeller, who died of complications from Alzheimer's disease in 1992.
"The mission of the Institute is to collaborate on new discoveries and treatments for neurological diseases, which so unfairly rob their victims and their families of so much," Rockefeller said. "The Institute is of deep, personal importance to me and my family. After watching my mother suffer the agony of Alzheimer's disease, I founded this Institute with a determination to someday spare others from this and other illnesses that affect the mind."
The $15 million gift is a combined donation from Senator Rockefeller and his wife Sharon, his sisters Sandra Ferry, Hope Aldrich and Alida Messinger, and his uncles David Rockefeller Sr. and Laurance Rockefeller. It represents the largest single donation to the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute. The research center is headquartered on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown, and has a partnership with Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.
Ernest Villafranca, PhD, CEO and Executive Director of the Institute said, "This generous gift from the Rockefeller family represents a major step forward for the Institute. This founding endowment will accelerate our progress toward building a state-of-the-art global resource for neurosciences research and neurological therapeutics development -- an area so vital to so many. We are extremely grateful to Senator Rockefeller and his family for their vision and support."
"By creating the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute and making this generous and significant $15 million contribution today, Senator Rockefeller and his family have helped to forever change how research on human memory is conducted. No one familiar with Sen. Rockefeller and his background could be surprised that from a family tragedy would spring an effort to help millions of people in this state and around the world," said WVU President and Institute board member David C. Hardesty Jr. "This donation comes at a critical time in the Institute's development, and will greatly advance the work of Institute researchers to preserve what we all hold most dear -- our memories."
Leadership of the Institute is provided by a Board of Directors, under the founding chairmanship of U.S. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV. Board Members include, Dr. Harold Varmus, CEO of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Dr. Chuck Vest, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Scientific leadership is provided by a Scientific Advisory Board and the Institute's Scientific Director. Anne B. Young, MD, PhD, serves as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Young is the Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Neurology Service at Massachusetts General Hospital. Eleven other internationally recognized neuroscientists comprise the SAB, including two Nobel Laureates -- Dr. Julius Axelrod and Dr. Marshall Nirenberg both of the National Institutes of Health. Daniel Alkon, MD, has joined the Institute as Scientific Director, following 30 years with the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Alkon is an internationally recognized authority in the basic science of learning and memory and will serve as Scientific Director of the Institute and Director of the Institute's Base Research Program in memory and memory disorders.
In June 2001 the Institute announced that Toyota Motor North America endowed the Toyota Chair in Advanced Brain Imaging with a gift of $1 million.
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