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Jane and Terry Semel |
$25M gift to deepen understanding of the brain
BY DAN PAGE
UCLA Today
Terry S. Semel, CEO of Yahoo! Inc., and his wife, Jane Bovingdon
Semel, founder of a nonprofit production company that addresses
public-health issues through entertainment, will donate $25 million
to endow UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. The gift is one
of the nation’s largest to be dedicated exclusively to better
understanding of the brain.
“We want to help lift the stigma that weighs heavily on
millions of Americans suffering from diseases of the brain by inspiring
greater public understanding of the impact of biology, genetics
and culture on behavior and personal health,” Terry Semel
said. Said Jane Semel, founder of ijane inc.: “We want our
gift to instill an even greater commitment on the part of UCLA and
other universities to strive to match scientific excellence with
humanistic care, compassion, and the development and dissemination
of self-care tools.”
Their gift will support research and community education programs
to enhance the understanding and treatment of such illnesses as
autism, Alzheimer’s disease, mood disorders and addiction.
In recognition of the Semels’ generosity, the institute will
be renamed the Jane and Terry Semel Institute of Neuroscience and
Human Behavior at UCLA.
“This gift will bring NPI and the significant contributions
of its faculty to public awareness,” said Peter Whybrow, institute
director, Judson Braun Professor and the executive chair of psychiatry
and biobehavioral sciences. “The neurosciences are so strong
at UCLA, and this institute is such a very important part of the
neuroscience community worldwide. We now have the opportunity through
the Semels’ gift to de-stigmatize brain disease and make people
aware of us as a community resource, not just as a place you go
to when you have a severe psychiatric disturbance.”
With a full-time faculty of 370 physicians and research scientists,
700 clinical faculty and 1,300 staff members, the institute this
fiscal year had operating revenues of more than $200 million, including
more than $125 million in competitive research grants from public
and private agencies. The gift comes at a time when the institute
is planning its future home. It will move temporarily into the new
replacement hospital when it is built so that the old NPI building
can be razed and a new one constructed.
“This exceptional gift from Terry and Jane Semel is important
to the continued vitality of this preeminent institute,” said
Gerald Levey, vice chancellor for medical sciences and dean of the
David Geffen School of Medicine. “Coming within three years
of the unprecedented gift by Mr. David Geffen endowing the School
of Medicine, the institute endowment is an additional crucial component
that will secure the future of UCLA as a world leader in medicine
and science.”
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