The University of California, Berkeley, has received a US$40 million gift from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠).
The donation from the Li Ka Shing Foundation will be used to establish a research center focused on new scientific fields including stem cell biology and brain imaging, according to a news release issued by the school on Thursday.
It is the largest international gift in the university's history. The new facility will be called the Li Ka-shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences.
Construction of the US$160 million research building is scheduled to begin in 2007 and is expected to be completed in 2009.
The center's scientists will research cancer, brain diseases such as Alzheimer's, infectious diseases such as HIV and dengue fever, and stem cell biology.
``This is a major gift that not only sets us on the critical path to completing the building phase of the Health Sciences Initiative, but also represents a strong endorsement from a world-leading philanthropist for the innovative and progressive biomedical science program at UC Berkeley,'' said chancellor Robert Birgeneau.
Li, who met with Birgeneau in Hong Kong this month, said that he was impressed with UC Berkeley's medical research when he met with former chancellor Robert Berdahl last year.
Hong Kong's richest man and ranked No. 22 on Forbes maga-zine's richest people list this year, Li controls the conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.
He has long supported education and health care sciences, partly because he had to drop out of school at age 12 when his father became ill and died.
Last month, Li donated US$128 million to the medical program at the University of Hong Kong. The school's decision to rename the program after Li drew criticism.
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