Google CEO Funds Innovation at Princeton

Google just won’t stop innovating, and now the company’s CEO is doing it philanthropically, too. Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, have donated $25 million to Princeton University to create an endowment for the "invention, development and utilization of cutting-edge technology that has the capacity to transform research in the natural sciences and engineering," according to a university press release.

The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund will be used to spur new directions in research. The campus-wide awards can fund the invention and use of totally new technologies that might push a field forward or support the purchase of a piece of technology that might open new research horizons in a field.

"This fund will allow Princeton's scientists and engineers to explore truly innovative ideas that need the creation or application of new technologies, including the kinds of technological breakthroughs that most funding sources are too risk-averse to support," said Princeton's president Shirley M. Tilghman.

Faculty will be invited to submit proposals every year, and the distribution of awards will be decided by an internal peer review committee made up of Princeton’s leading scientists and engineers and chaired by Dean for Research A.J. Stewart Smith.

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