Microsoft's Paul Allen to Donate $100 Million Towards Bioscience Research

Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, just announced that he will be donating $100 million for research dedicated to bioscience.

The billionaire, estimated to be worth $17.7 billion, according to Washington Post, announced on March 23 that he will donate the millions to create the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, a fund focusing on biotech research.

Tufts and Stanford Universities will use the donation specifically for creating new research centers and to individual scientists for projects on tissue regeneration, antibiotic resistance, gene editing and the development of brain circuitry.

"To make the kind of transformational advances we seek and thus shape a better future, we must invest in scientists willing to pursue what some might consider out-of-the-box approaches at the very edges of knowledge," Allen said in a statement at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. "This of course entails a risk of setbacks and failures. But without risk, there is rarely significant reward, and unless we try truly novel approaches, we may never find the answers we seek."

The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group will be run by Tom Skalak, who has also been the vice president of research at the University of Virginia.

"Over the next 50 years bioscience will undergo a radical transformation as advancements in life sciences converge with mathematics, physical sciences and engineering," shared Skalak. "The time is now to make this type of transformative investment in bioscience to advance the field and ultimately to make the world better."

Allen has been known to support research for bioscience. He first received skepticism for previously donating $100 million to map the mouse brain in 2003, but since then the research has become the basis for many other projects to according to the Post.