The Balvi Filantropic Fund, spearheaded by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, donated $15 million USDC to the University of California San Diego to research airborne pathogens. This marks one of the largest donations ever made to an American university and is also the biggest donation ever towards open-source research on aerosols. This generous contribution will undoubtedly further knowledge and understanding of the subject.
Vitalik Buterin and Balvi have allowed UC San Diego to advance their research into airborne diseases in a changing climate by establishing their new Meta-Institute for Airborne Disease in a Changing Climate, The Airborne Institute.
This generous donation will enable atmospheric chemist and professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UC San Diego, Kimberly Prather, to explore the production, survival, and transport of airborne microbes in a changing climate around the world. “We are immensely grateful for this incredible gift from Vitalik Buterin and Balvi,” said Prather.
The Balvi Filantropic Fund, established in partnership with the Shiba Inu community and CryptoRelief – India’s emergency relief fund – in May 2022, will lead a research unit into COVID-19 under the direction of Professor Prather Rommie Amaro, Director of the National Biomedical Computation Resource at UC San Diego. This research unit hopes to significantly contribute to tackling the global pandemic.
Since its launch, the Balvi fund has donated over $15 million to more than ten coronavirus-related research projects. The largest grant of $5.3 million was made to The University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, to develop a tool to detect virus outbreaks quickly.
Additionally, the fund led a $15 million donation to the Long Covid Research Initiative, which is researching a long-term condition caused by the COVID-19 virus. The crypto community has been at the forefront of donations to numerous global causes, including $50 million for victims of Russia’s attacks in Ukraine during Q1 2022 and, more recently, aid for those affected by earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.
