The Washington Research Foundation has given the University $1 million to establish endowed fellowships for promising graduate students pursuing interdisciplinary studies, the UW announced July 14.
The money comes from income generated by past discoveries at the UW that spurred new and highly profitable business activity—specifically, a genetic engineering technique developed and patented in the early 1980s that led to an effective vaccine against hepatitis B. That vaccine is now used worldwide.
The foundation’s gift honors the technique’s inventors, Professor Benjamin Hall and Dr. Gustav Ammerer. Hall, who joined the UW faculty in 1963, is professor of genetics and adjunct professor of
botany. Ammerer, in 1980 a postdoctoral fellow in genetics at the UW, currently is on the faculty of the University of Vienna.
“The students who will benefit from this gift are tomorrow’s Ben Halls and Gustav Ammerers,” said Thomas Cable, the foundation’s chairman. “In their own way and time, these students will go on to make their own contributions to the Seattle area’s rich tradition of intellectual entrepreneurship that provides so many benefits, economic and otherwise, to the entire state.”
The Washington Research Foundation was established in 1981 as a non-profit, independent organization. It seeks out and patents new inventions made at the UW and other Washington public research institutions. These inventions must show a high potential for generating new business activity. The foundation then typically licenses these new technologies to the private sector, where they engender new products. If the products are a success, they generate income, profits, tax revenue and jobs—along with royalty fees that flow back to the foundation, the research institutions and the inventors.