Salk Institute revenues rise to $134 million in 2017 fiscal year

October 2, 2017

Salk Institute revenues rise to $134 million in 2017 fiscal year

Overall revenues increase 13.5 percent over previous fiscal year

October 2, 2017

LA JOLLA—The Salk Institute announced that total revenues in fiscal year 2017 (July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017) rose to $134 million from $118 million the previous fiscal year, a 13.5 percent increase. Nearly half of the revenues, $62 million, came from donors, including foundation gifts and grants, and individual gifts and bequests. The balance came from government and corporate funding and investment income.

“Critical scientific research at the Salk Institute is proceeding at a rapid pace,” says Elizabeth Blackburn, the Institute’s president and winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. “A robust revenue stream makes possible the life-changing discoveries that we continue to accomplish and I am especially grateful to the visionary philanthropists, both here in San Diego and spanning the globe, who recognize the importance of aiding these discoveries.” Blackburn was honored by TIME magazine in September as one of 46 “women who are changing the world.”

A three-year, $25 million grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, which took effect in January, highlights the Institute’s strong philanthropic support. The grant extends the historic $42 million Helmsley gift made to the Salk Institute in 2013 and supports an ambitious range of projects at the Institute aimed at understanding the role chronic inflammation plays in driving human disease. Another three-year fund, the $50 million Rockstar Fund, established last year in honor of Salk’s Chairman Emeritus Irwin Jacobs, continues to support recruitment of the world’s top scientists to the Salk faculty.

Recent scientific breakthroughs at the Institute have attracted additional funding from the federal government. In August, Reuben Shaw, the director of Salk’s Cancer Center, received the National Cancer Institute’s “Outstanding Investigator Award” along with $8 million in funding over seven years to “encourage cancer research with breakthrough potential.”

Investigations by Salk scientists into the structure and mechanisms of the human brain have also been garnering monetary awards. Tatyana Sharpee’s lab received nearly $1 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to pursue computational modeling of brain operations. Terrence Sejnowski, along with collaborators from the California Institute of Technology, also received a $1 million NSF award. In addition, he and collaborators at the University of Texas and the Texas Advanced Computing Center received an NSF grant of over $9 million to investigate their hypotheses. Another Salk scientist, Ed Callaway, and a group at Stanford University, also received over $9 million from the NSF to combine genetics, physics, optics, engineering and biology to study the brain.

“We’re striving to answer some of the most pressing questions in biology,” says Martin Hetzer, vice president/chief science officer and professor at the Salk Institute. “We have top scientists working across different disciplines and we’re making a positive impact on both the planet and the people who live on it.”