Ethereum Founder’s Fund Donates $15M To Fight Airborne Pathogens

Key Points:

• Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin’s Balvi Filantropic Fund donates $15 million in USDC to UC San Diego for open-source research on aerosols.
• The donation establishes the Meta-Institute for Airborne Disease in a Changing Climate, or “The Airborne Institute,” at UC San Diego.

The Balvi Filantropic Fund, directed by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, has gifted the University of California San Diego $15 million in USDC, the largest cryptocurrency gift to date to fund open-source research on aerosols.

This generous donation has established the Meta-Institute for Airborne Disease in a Changing Climate, or “The Airborne Institute,” at UC San Diego.

This multidisciplinary institute aims to explore aerosolized pathogens and their impact, including allergies, asthma, and systemic diseases that spread via aerosol transmission, such as COVID-19. It will leverage the expertise of researchers from various fields, such as health care, engineering, and atmospheric chemistry, to develop cutting-edge tools and techniques for studying these problems.

The institute plans to develop a standard for sampling and analyzing airborne microbes and pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, fungal spores, and pollutants to achieve its goals. Researchers will set up air samplers in various locations worldwide to measure the distribution of airborne pathogens around the globe.

They are currently testing the samplers in Imperial Beach, California, a coastal site heavily impacted by pollution runoff and sewage flowing into the ocean. The team is studying ocean sources of airborne pathogens and the water-to-air transfer of specific viruses to understand the atmospheric sources of bioaerosols.

We are excited to launch this new institute that will allow us to take a multidisciplinary approach to better understand airborne transmission of disease. Working together with health care experts, infectious disease doctors, engineers, respiratory experts and scientists, we will be developing state-of-the-art measurements and computational tools to study these problems. A major goal is to develop a better understanding of the production and sources of airborne bioparticles and how long they remain infectious.

said Kim Prather

In addition to its research efforts, the Meta-Institute will leverage UC San Diego’s infrastructure for environmental monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 as part of its award-winning Return to Learn program. This program has made significant strides in detecting pathogens in wastewater and on surfaces, and the institute aims to extend this monitoring to the air we breathe.

Overall, the Meta-Institute for Airborne Disease in a Changing Climate represents a significant step forward in the fight against airborne pathogens and pollutants. With the support of Vitalik Buterin and the Balvi Filantropic Fund, researchers at UC San Diego will be able to develop a better understanding of the production and sources of airborne bioparticles and how long they remain infectious, ultimately leading to improvements in global infrastructure and public policy to benefit people around the world.

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