Newswise — (Cambridge MA, 5 May 2011) The McGovern Institute for Brain Research will soon have a sibling in China. On April 22nd an agreement was signed between Patrick McGovern, chairman of International Data Group Inc. (IDG) and co-founder of the McGovern Institute at MIT, and top officials of Tsinghua University, to establish a new institute for brain research in Beijing.
Under the agreement, Patrick and Lore Harp McGovern will donate US$10 million to establish the new institute and support its first ten years of operations, with matching contributions from Tsinghua. To ensure its longer-term future, the agreement also provides for the establishment of two foundations, the IDG China Foundation and the Harmony Foundation, that will raise additional funds, with help from IDG, for the institute’s eventual endowment.
“Understanding the human brain is one of the great challenges of our time”, said Patrick McGovern. “My wife and I are confident that in the next decade this new Institute will play an important role in discovering cures for mental illness and brain disease that will benefit millions of people, not only in China, but worldwide. We are especially pleased that this new Institute is at Tsinghua University, a world-class research institution that is often called ‘the MIT of China’.”
“Our ambition is to find a cure for at least one brain disorder during our lifetime”, said Lore McGovern. “We hope that by bringing together the best minds from around the world, first at MIT and now at Tsinghua University, we will accelerate progress toward this goal.”
The new institute, which will be called the IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Tsinghua University (IMIBR-TSU), will conduct research in all areas of neuroscience, with an emphasis on cellular, molecular, systems and computational neuroscience. It will be fully integrated into the host university, with an organizational structure similar to that of the McGovern Institute at MIT. It is expected to grow to at least 16 labs, each headed by a top researcher who will hold a Tsinghua faculty appointment. It will be housed in a new building with over 4000 sq m of lab space on the Tsinghua campus; design work has already begun, and the building is expected to open in 2013. A board of directors, with joint representation from IDG and TSU, will oversee the institute. One of their early priorities will be to appoint a director for the institute.
The future fundraising effort for IMIBR-TSU will be led by Hugo Shong, Founding General Partner of IDG Capital Partners, who will head both the IDG China Foundation and the Harmony Foundation, a charity organization set up by IDG Capital Partners. "My colleagues and I greatly admire what Pat and Lore have done with McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT," Shong said. “We are delighted to see that they have chosen Tsinghua to be the first international center for brain research in our home country of China, and we are happy to assist its future growth as well."
Shong helped Patrick McGovern to set up China’s first technology venture firm, IDG Technology Ventures, in 1993. Over the past 18 years the firm has invested in over 200 companies, including four - Sohu, Soufun, Baidu and Ctrip - that are now publicly traded in the US. Shong and his colleagues have already pledged over $2 million to the McGovern Institute to support collaborative programs with China, including a symposium at Tsinghua University in 2009.
The agreement with Tsinghua University was signed at a ceremony in Beijing by Patrick McGovern, Dr. GU Binglin, President of Tsinghua University and SONG Jun, Vice Chairman and Secretary General of the Education Foundation of Tsinghua. Also present were Lore Harp McGovern; Hugo Shong; Robert Desimone, Director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT; SHI Yigong, Executive Vice Dean of the School of Medicine of Tsinghua University; and LIU Guosong and ZHONG Yi, professors from the Neuroscience Department of the School of Medicine of Tsinghua University.
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