The Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust of Muscatine, Iowa, has committed $1.5 million to Iowa State University to create a research discovery endowment for instrumentation in the Roy J. Carver Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology.
The endowment will maintain state-of-the-art equipment keeping the department at the forefront of discovery in biomolecular structure and function. The gift will be used to update and enhance existing equipment, provide funds for maintenance and leverage support for new equipment. Having an instrumentation and equipment endowment dedicated to biomolecular structure makes Iowa State’s department unique among its peers.
The instrumentation is used by biologists, biochemists, biomedical scientists, geneticists, cell biologists, computational biologists, and other life sciences researchers to pursue advanced research at Iowa State into diverse biological systems, with an overarching goal to develop an integrated understanding of cellular processes. Unlocking the inner workings of cells will enable new discoveries that bring profound benefits to society in health, nutrition and agriculture.
“The Roy J. Carver Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology is extremely appreciative of the ongoing support from the Carver Trust,” said Amy H. Andreotti, the Roy J. Carver Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology. “The trust clearly recognizes the critical importance of the sophisticated scientific instrumentation that we rely on to conduct research and train students. This generous gift provides us with a reliable source of funding to support and promote the exciting research activities of our faculty and students into the future.”
This gift follows a $7.5 million commitment from the Carver Trust in 2012 to support a research initiative in biomolecular structure at Iowa State. The investment included purchasing $2.8 million in top-of-the-line instrumentation for the department, which was named in honor of the Carver Trust in 2012.
The Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust in Muscatine, Iowa, is one of the largest private philanthropic foundations in the state of Iowa, with assets of more than $300 million and annual grant distributions of more than $14 million. It was created through the will of Roy J. Carver, a Muscatine industrialist and philanthropist, who died in 1981.
The Roy J. Carver Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology is jointly administered by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The research and education mission of the department is to better understand the molecular mechanisms of living systems in terms of fundamental chemical and physical principles.