American charitable foundation
W. M. Keck Foundation Founded 1954 Founder William Myron Keck Focus supporting scientific, engineering, and medical research Location Area served
United States Website www.wmkeck.org
W. M. Keck Observatory at dawn,Mauna Kea , HawaiiThe Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii projects a laser beam into the night sky to form an artificial guide star foradaptive optics . Thegalactic plane of the Milky Way is visible in the sky to the right of the image. The stars are trailed in this 3 minute fixed camera exposure due to the rotation of the earth. Oldpumpjack in the W. M. Keck Foundation Gallery,Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County TheKeck Array at theSouth Pole observatory, Antarctica. TheW. M. Keck Foundation is an Americancharitable foundation supportingscientific ,engineering , andmedical research in theUnited States . It was founded in 1954 byWilliam Myron Keck , founder and president ofSuperior Oil Company (part ofExxonMobil since 1999). The Foundation's net assets exceeded $1.3 billion at the end of 2019.
From its founding until his death in 1964, the Foundation was led byWilliam Myron Keck . From 1964 to 1995, it was led by W. M. Keck's son,Howard B. Keck .[ 1] Robert Addison Day , W. M. Keck's grandson, became its president and chairman in 1995. He continued to serve as its chairman until his death in 2023.
The foundation is led by Joseph Day and Stephen M. Keck.[ 2]
The Foundation provides grants in five broad areas: science and engineering research,undergraduate science and engineering, medical research,liberal arts , inSouthern California . Some of the more notable projects that have received funding from the Keck Foundation include:
2017: The Keck Center for Science and Engineering,[ 3] Chapman University , $21 million 2015:The Keck Laboratory for Network Physiology [ 4] [ 5] [ 6] Boston University , $1 million The W. M. Keck Center for Language Study[ 7] Colgate University The Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies ofClaremont McKenna College (the alma mater ofRobert Addison Day ,William Myron Keck 's grandson, and chairman and president of W. M. Keck Foundation) The W.M. Keck Science Department ofClaremont McKenna College ,Pitzer College , andScripps College . The W.M. Keck Center for Noncoding RNAUniversity of California, San Francisco The W.M. Keck Center for Interdisciplinary Bioscience Training atRice University inHouston ,Texas (training arm of the Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC))[ 8] Support for building of the Keck Observatory atPacific Lutheran University inTacoma, Washington 1985, 1991: Construction of theW. M. Keck Observatory atMauna Kea Observatory inHawaii , Keck I, Keck II, about $70 million for each Keck Institute for Space Studies , established in 2008, a joint institute of theCalifornia Institute of Technology and theJet Propulsion Laboratory 1999: Expansion of theKeck School of Medicine at theUniversity of Southern California inLos Angeles, California , $110 million[ 9] The W.M. Keck Building Center forfMRI & the W.M. Keck Foundation Center for Ocean-Atmosphere Research at theUniversity of California, San Diego Creation of theKeck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences inClaremont, California Sponsor of the Keck Computer Science Lab atLoyola Marymount University inLos Angeles, California The W.M. Keck Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry atUniversity of California, Irvine The WM Keck Center for 3D Innovation atUniversity of Texas at El Paso [ 10] The William M. Keck Building at theCalifornia Institute of Technology The Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics inWashington D.C. The Keck Science Center atPepperdine University [ 11] TheKeck Array , part of theBICEP experiment (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) at the South Pole observatory. W.M. Keck Earth Science and Metal Engineering Museum at theMackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering , whose renovation the foundation funded, at theUniversity of Nevada, Reno The Keck Theater atOccidental College [ 12] The Keck Foundation has been a long-time supporter ofpublic television inSouthern California , including underwriting the broadcast ofSesame Street onKCET since the 1970s.
Research Program funding as of 2014[update]
The W. M. Keck Research Program had these requirements for its 2015 grant cycle:
Research that is high impact and that questions or challenges the prevailing paradigm[ 13] Research projects that no one else is pursuing[ 13] A new research project that is in its early stages[ 13] Basic research [ 13] Research that would result in general information and new methodologies that can be of benefit to the field, even if the project were to go awry[ 13] Research projects that are not funded by any other foundation, and research projects that could not move along without Keck funding[ 13] Though this is not a requirement, the W.M. Keck Foundation prefers projects that involve some kind of collaboration over single investigator research[ 13]
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