Warren Alpert Foundation Gifts $20 Million to Medical School

The Warren Alpert Foundation has donated $20 million to Harvard Medical School, joining a string of multimillion-dollar gifts to the University as it rolls through its $6.5 billion capital campaign.

Harvard Medical School. By Kevin H. Lin

Money from the gift will be allocated among three priorities delineated by the foundation, according to a press release announcing the donation. A sum of $5 million will fund the a new Department of Health Care Policy professorship.

Another $7.5 million will endow the Warren Alpert Foundation Discovery Fund for Immunologic Research. The Medical School will be able to use the fund to fuel research in the field of immunology.

The last $7.5 million is slated to finance the Warren Alpert Foundation Dean’s Leadership Fund, which Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey S. Flier—and future deans—can put toward the Medical School’s most pressing needs as he sees fit.

“I am grateful to The Warren Alpert Foundation for its long-standing partnership, generosity, and visionary commitment to our priorities of service, leadership, and discovery,” Flier wrote in an email Thursday. “It is only with the support of partners like this that we can continue to fulfill our mission to alleviate human suffering caused by disease.”

The Medical School and the Warren Alpert Foundation have a long history of collaboration, according to Flier. The school’s departments of neurobiology and systems biology, among other offices and centers, are located in the Warren Alpert Building, and the foundation previously endowed a basic research professorship.

The Warren Alpert Foundation is a philanthropic foundation that aims to promote innovative scholarship in the world of medicine.

The Medical School has a capital campaign goal of $750 million

—Staff writer Melanie Y. Fu can be reached at mfu@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @MelanieYFu.

—Staff writer Jiwon Joung can be reached at joung@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @YunaJoung.