At a time when Harvard University is experiencing deep cuts to its federal funding and looking for alternative avenues for money, Turkish investment firm, İş Private Equity, committed $39 million over 10 years to support a Harvard faculty member’s lab, according to the university.
The investment, through the private equity firm’s biotech startup, is aimed at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health faculty member Gökhan Hotamışlıgil‘s work, aiming to create potential therapies for obesity and other metabolic diseases.
The privately sourced funding could be a highly pursued avenue for the institution, as the federal government strips nearly $3 billion of its federal dollars and additional contracts in the name of addressing antisemitism.
“Harvard Chan School has long welcomed industry collaborations and research sponsorship, with strong guardrails to prevent conflicts of interest,” Andrea Baccarelli, Dean of the Faculty at Harvard Chan School, wrote in a letter to the community last week.
Initial funding of Hotamışlıgil’s more than 20 years of work came from the National Institutes of Health. It helped uncover new insights about the metabolic system and identified a protein that plays a critical role in obesity and age-related disorders, according to the university.
The lab didn’t have any current federal grants canceled at the time of the investment firm’s announcement, a university spokesperson said.
New modes of funding
Harvard has also been dealing with a wave of federal research grant terminations and was barred from acquiring new federal grants.
While a federal judge on Monday ordered that the Trump administration restore 367 National Institutes of Health grants, it doesn’t apply to a broad swath of grants, including the large numbers at Harvard.
The Harvard Chan School announced in April that it was facing a “significant budget crisis” resulting in layoffs and the non-renewal of two building leases. Since then, every one of the school’s direct federal grants have been terminated and the school has even taken to social media to ask for donations.
Federal funding makes up 46% of Harvard Chan School’s budget.
At the same time as the investment firm is putting money into Harvard, others have been pitching in as well.
Donors have contributed more than $3.5 million in recent weeks and alumni and members of the public have raised $350,000 for Harvard Chan School, according to a letter from Dean Baccarelli.
“Each contribution is a vote of confidence in our mission, our people and our future,” she said.
The school also created a new Dean’s Leadership Fund for existing donors to support.
“Harvard Chan School will emerge from this crisis a focused, resilient and unambiguously world-class school of public health, dedicated to excellence and impact and strengthened by surprising, solutions-focused partnerships,” she wrote.
