Schmidt Fund Awards Go to Projects With Transformative Potential
Three projects with the potential for broad impacts in science and technology have been selected to receive support from the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund.
The projects include a technology for improving ultrasound’s grainy images, a system for boosting biofuel production, and a facility for designing and testing new wind power technologies.
Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google parent company Alphabet Inc., and his wife, Wendy, created the $25 million endowment fund in 2009 to support the development of new technologies at Princeton University that could have broad beneficial impacts. Eric Schmidt is a 1976 alumnus and former trustee of the University.
“The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund gives Princeton the capacity to invest in truly innovative and highly promising research — research that is often considered too forward-looking for traditional funding mechanisms,” said Dean for Research Pablo Debenedetti, the Class of 1950 Professor in Engineering and Applied Science and professor of chemical and biological engineering. “This year’s selected proposals are outstanding in terms of the quality of the science and engineering as well the potential to benefit humanity through practical benefits to human health and the environment.”