The Rockefeller University
Since 1988, The Starr Foundation has donated more than $165 million to New York’s Rockefeller University, one of the world’s leading biomedical research universities.
Foundation grants have supported pathbreaking laboratory investigations and clinical studies in areas including genetics, obesity and metabolism, hepatitis C, diseases of the digestive system, chronic inflammation, autoimmunity, and cancer, among others.
Major funding includes:
In 2006, The Starr Foundation committed $50 million to establish the Starr Fund for Collaborative Science. The gift supports collaborative exchange among the 70+ laboratories on the Rockefeller University campus, reflecting longtime Foundation Chair Maurice R. Greenberg’s conviction that collaboration is a vital means of accelerating biomedical discovery and translating basic knowledge into medical applications that improve human health. The grant also funded construction of the Collaborative Research Center, joining two historic laboratory buildings to create a unified scientific facility. The facility’s heart is the Maurice R. and Corinne P. Greenberg Building, which provides vibrant open spaces for scientists to gather informally. This project’s seamless floor plans and modern workspaces have boosted Rockefeller’s ability to attract new faculty members interested in collaborative ventures, along with exceptional graduate students and postdoctoral scientists working at the frontiers of biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics.
A $25 million Starr Foundation–funded endowment, established in 2019, supports 20 labs in interdisciplinary research on mechanisms of inflammation and the body’s interactions with resident microbes, with a primary focus on diseases that affect the digestive system. Center scientists have made key discoveries, including the treatment of diabetes, therapeutics for inflammatory bowel disease, a potential new colon cancer therapy, and the link between microbiome health and brain function.
Also in 2019, The Starr Foundation contributed $25 million to establish a new center for the application of advanced mathematics and computation to the analysis of biological and biomedical data, including artificial intelligence and deep learning approaches to handling vast data sets. This work is accelerating the drug discovery process, improving success rates, and reducing costs.
Since 1995, The Starr Foundation has contributed close to $10 million toward pioneering research on the genetics of widespread health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, autoimmunity, cancer, and mental illness. The work has included studies of the roles of genes in complex disorders ranging from Alzheimer’s disease to obesity, with the long-term goal of advancing diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. In 2010, the Rockefeller University molecular geneticist Dr. Jeffrey M. Friedman, a principal investigator of the center, received the Albert Lasker Award for his discovery of leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite and body weight. His work transformed thinking about obesity by showing that many overweight people suffer from metabolic disruptions, not a lack of willpower. This insight helped pave the way for the application of drugs like Ozempic as weight loss tools.
Women & Science Lecture & Lunch with Agata Smogorzewska
For more than 20 years, The Starr Foundation has proudly supported the Rockefeller University’s Women & Science Initiative, which highlights the contributions of women scientists, underscores the importance of basic science in addressing women’s health challenges, and encourages more women philanthropists to prioritize scientific research in their charitable gifts. In 2024, The Starr Foundation established the Corinne P. Greenberg Women & Science Professorship to support an esteemed woman scientist in cultivating innovative scientific work and research initiatives. Microbiologist Dr. Elizabeth Campbell is the inaugural recipient of the professorship.
Rockefeller’s partnership with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medicine established the Starr-funded Center for the Study of Hepatitis C, which takes an interdisciplinary approach to investigating the hepatitis C virus by combining basic research in molecular and cellular biology with clinical studies. Center Director Charles Rice, who holds Rockefeller’s Maurice R. and Corinne P. Greenberg Professorship, shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work that led to a cure for hepatitis C.
Rockefeller University is also a partner in the Starr Cancer Consortium and the Tri-Institutional Stem Cell Initiative, which have collectively received $350 million in Foundation grants.