The University of California San Diego announced that it had received its biggest-ever donation for research on airborne pathogens, including COVID-19.
According to the announcement, a Vitalik Buterin-directed philanthropic foundation had donated $15 million worth of USD Coin (USDC) to establish the UC San Diego Meta-Institute for Airborne Disease in a Changing Climate.
The funds will be used to build the facility and power research on airborne pathogens like COVID-19.
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The Balvi Filantopic Fund, which made the donation, describes itself as a “scientific investment and direct gifting fund for deploying quickly to high-value COVID projects that traditional institutional or commercial funding sources tend to overlook.”
UC San Diego revealed that the donation was the biggest donation ever to fund airborne pathogens research it had ever received. The funds will be used to study airborne pathogens. It will include studying how far they travel, how long they survive, and how different environmental conditions affect their viability.
One of the recent studies published by researchers associated with the institute revealed that around 75% of aerosols close to Imperial Beach contained bacteria emanating from raw sewage in the Tijuana Estuary.
When talking about the donation, Kim Prather, a co-director at the new institute, said:
We are excited to launch this new institute that will allow us to take a multidisciplinary approach to better understand the airborne transmission of disease.
On top of that, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also shared his thoughts on the most recent donation:
I am pleased to support the creation of this new institute at UC San Diego, which will work to grow our scientific knowledge about the airborne disease and share it freely, enabling changes to infrastructure and policy that benefit people around the globe.
Vitalik Buterin recently earned around $700,000 after dumping billion of tokens, including SHIKOKU (SHIK), Mops (MOPS), and Cult DAO (CULT).
