The University of California San Diego has announced a $15 million gift made in USD coin (USDC) from the Balvi Filantropic Fund, directed by Vitalik Buterin, in support of airborne pathogen research.

One of the largest gifts of cryptocurrency ever made to a U.S. university will establish the Meta-Institute for Airborne Disease in a Changing Climate, to be housed in the School of Biological Sciences, and supported by researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the School of Physical Sciences. Among other efforts, institute researchers will work to develop a standard for sampling and analyzing airborne microbes and pathogens in viruses, bacteria, fungal spores, and pollutants; investigate the health impacts of inhaling the aerosolized particles; and use advanced computational techniques to understand how different production pathways impact aerosol size distribution, composition, and viability.

Research supported by the gift will be published in open-access journals, and intellectual property related to the development of research equipment and instrumentation will be placed into the public domain. Buterin is the founder of the Ethereum blockchain network.

“Over the last several years, it has become abundantly apparent that we need more open-source scientific research to better understand airborne pathogens and pollutants and how they affect us,” said Buterin. “I am pleased to support the creation of this new institute at UC San Diego, which will work to grow our scientific knowledge about airborne disease and share it freely, enabling changes to infrastructure and policy that benefit people around the globe.”

“At UC San Diego, we translate discoveries into solutions,” said UCSD chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. “This generous, visionary gift will empower our world-class scientists and researchers to conduct collaborative, interdisciplinary studies of airborne diseases and pollutants with the potential to drive new discoveries to improve human health—all for the greater good.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Hispanolistic)