Beginning in 2016, the Foundation provided $65 million in multi-year grants to support the Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale and the Blavatnik Fellowship in Life Science Entrepreneurship.
The Blavatnik Fund for Innovation, which bridges the gap between life sciences research and business, accelerates the development, application, and commercialization of ground-breaking, investigator-initiated discoveries.
The Blavatnik Fellows Program provides a select group of young professionals access to Yale researchers, as well as inventors, venture capitalists, and business leaders who provide the fellows with the technical and business skills needed to become the next generation of leaders in scientific entrepreneurship.
Beginning in 2013, the Foundation provided a separate $15 million grant to support the work of renowned Yale immunobiologists Ruslan Medzhitov and Richard Flavell exploring how inflammation impacts the body’s homeostatic control mechanisms to trigger the onset of disease.
The grant also supports Professor Medzhitov’s ongoing research into biological maintenance mechanisms. That research explores issues including how the body fights aging, how these defense mechanisms can be leveraged to improve lives by reducing the impact of aging-associated diseases, the control mechanisms for these defenses, and defining the biological mechanisms of sleep and its effect on health and disease.
