Purdue U. Set to Receive Millions From Entrepreneur

The Alfred E. Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering will endow Purdue University—with a gift expected to be $100-million or more—for an institute to develop and market promising inventions, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Purdue officials have planned a news conference for Friday to announce “a major new program to promote economic development that will be funded through the largest single gift for research the university has ever received.”

The foundation, endowed by billionaire Alfred E. Mann, planned to establish 12 to 15 institutes where university inventions can be commercialized. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University turned down the foundation’s offer because of concerns over its control of their intellectual-property rights.

The University of Southern California, a private institution, has the only existing Alfred Mann Institute.

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