USC Institute Receives $50M Donation
Video by Patricia Silva
The Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, which specializes in neuroscience research, has received a 50 million dollar donation to help them further their research.
The donation comes from venture capitalist Mark Stevens and his wife Mary Stevens, who have both donated to USC before. Head researcher at the Institute Dr. Arthur Toga says they are "visionary" donors, who have a "great appreciation" for the work produced by the institute and ones like it.
"This is very competitive field," Dr. Toga says. "One of the things a gift like this does is it enables us to compete in a world that is hard to get grant money."
As it is an endowment donation, the money will only go towards funding new research projects, allowing Dr. Toga and his team to advance their research in new and exciting ways.
"It can help a lot of people especially ones with [different] kinds of [diseases] or disorders," says USC Keck School of Medicine student Mylyn Caballegan.
"If you have that much money, why not donate right?"
The donation comes at an exciting time for the Institute, as they prepare to move to a new, high tech building next March.
There they will have two MRI machines and state-of-art scanning equipment, giving them the tools to explore more about the one thing that makes us human: our brains.
The new building will be located on Keck's main campus.
