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Entrepreneur and philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss has donated an additional $350 million to Harvard University to support the research center that bears his name: the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
Wyss, a graduate of Harvard Business School, donated $125 million to establish the institute in 2009. Since then, he has made additional gifts of more than $150 million to advance the institute’s mission of transforming health care and the environment by developing new technologies grounded in the building blocks of nature and “accelerating the translation of those technologies into products through the formation of startups and corporate partnerships,” according to the news release from Harvard.
“Since its founding 13 years ago, the Wyss Institute has been devoted to breaking down silos within and between academia and industry,” said Harvard University president Larry Bacow. “That aspiration, expressed passionately and persistently by Hansjörg Wyss, has yielded a unique model of collaborative and cross-disciplinary research, as well as disruptive innovations that are improving and savings lives.”
The “bioinspired technologies” developed by the Wyss Institute have resulted in nearly 4,000 patent filings, more than 100 licensing agreements and 50 start-ups. In the spring of 2023, the 375 full-time employees will move to a new headquarters in Boston near Harvard Medical School.
