Duke University has announced a $50 million grant from the Duke Endowment in support of the university's efforts to add faculty in computation and materials science.

The second phase of a $100 million investment announced in 2019 — the largest commitment in the university's history — will help fund Duke Science and Technology, an effort to accelerate and expand the recruitment of new faculty in science, medicine, technology, engineering, and mathematics and bolster the core research strengths that enable Duke faculty to address difficult global challenges. In the two years since the university announced the first half of the award, the investment has been used to recruit and retain some of the country's leading scholar-scientists — an effort expected to continue over the next few years.

"The faculty we are able to recruit thanks to this investment from the Duke Endowment have enormous quality and potential," said Duke University provost Sally Kornbluth. "We are confident that their work will result in increased impact, elevate Duke to new levels of scientific discovery, and improve health outcomes for the citizens of North Carolina and beyond. We want to continue to build on this success."

"This extraordinary gift from the Duke Endowment advances our university’s position as a destination for exceptional and visionary faculty in a competitive global market," said Duke University president Vincent E. Price. "These scholars will accelerate discovery and collaborative research across our campus and around the world. Duke’s next century will be one of unbounded intellectual curiosity in which uniquely talented and creative scientists come together in new ways to ask the most difficult questions and try to tackle the most critical challenges of our day."