UF, FIU, FAU researchers and patients to benefit from major donation from Miami couple
.jpg "Herbert and Nicole Wertheim donated $100 million to UF Scripps Biomedical Research in Jupiter, which develops treatments for genetic, infectious and autoimmune diseases, as well as brain disorders and cancers.")
Researchers at the University of Florida, Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University will enter 2023 on a new level, boosted by a historic donation from the Dr. Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Family Foundation.
The foundation donated $100 million — the largest gift from an individual donor in UF history — to name UF Scripps Biomedical Research, a research institute in Jupiter dedicated to finding treatments for genetic, infectious and autoimmune diseases, as well as brain disorders and cancers.
The Wertheim Foundation’s donation will serve as a “transformational lead investment” that will “launch a 10-year, $1 billion public-private partnership” to advance science, train the next generation of innovators and investigators, and improve the “health outcomes and experiences of countless patients and families in Palm Beach County, throughout Florida and across the nation,” according to a press release from UF Health, the medical arm of the Gainesville university.
READ MORE: FIU continues rapid rise in national rankings, UF and UM hold their spots
Herbert Wertheim, 83, a self-made optometrist/engineer/entrepreneur who graduated from UF and donated millions to establish FIU’s medical school, helped facilitate the integration of UF Scripps with UF Health last spring. The Wertheims provided the funding to UF Scripps in October.
The Wertheim Family Foundation, active for 50 years, adheres to a mission statement of “making life on Earth better.”
“What we are creating at the Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation and Technology in Jupiter, Florida, will be a shared multibillion-dollar resource for a collaborative funding model for fellowships and facilities for UF, FAU and FIU faculty, graduate and undergraduate student research,” Wertheim told the Herald.
“It will have the DNA and collaboration of the famous California Scripps Research, and its many Nobel and other prize-winning faculty and staff — their most recent, two Nobel prizes in 2021 and 22 in Medicine and Chemistry and a third very possible in 2023,” he added.
UF, the highest-ranked public university in the state by U.S. News & World Report, partnered in April with the Florida campus of Scripps Research, a top-ranked biomedical research institute based in La Jolla, California.
FAU, in Boca Raton, and FIU, in Miami, will also benefit from the investment because of their collaboration with UF.
“We look forward to partnering with UF to help leverage this important gift by working together on projects such as the establishment of a biotechnology incubator through a collaboration with our Center for Translational Science (CTS) in Port St. Lucie,” Madeline Baro, an FIU spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement. “We will develop the financial aspect of our collaboration over time.”
Researchers at the FIU Center for Translational Science study issues like lung vascular and airway disease and brain injury and aging.
Revolutionized dyslexia treatment, sunglass lenses
Wertheim founded and is the CEO of Brain Power Inc., a major manufacturer of optical lens tints and ophthalmic instruments and chemicals. He developed a line of lens tints that revolutionized treatment for dyslexia, something he had battled since childhood, and created lenses to slow the eye’s macrodegeneration. He was also instrumental in creating dyes for plastic sunglass lenses.
He and his wife have shared their wealth widely in public higher education, financing efforts like UF’s Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, and FIU’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and the Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing and Health Sciences at the Miami university. FIU’s performing arts center also is named after them.
This story was originally published December 13, 2022 at 1:40 PM.
