Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, have donated $25 million to Princeton University to create an endowment fund supporting technology research.
According to the Ivy League university, from which Schmidt graduated in 1976 with a degree in electrical engineering, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund will award funding through an annual campus-wide, peer-reviewed competition.
The endowment will support the "invention or implementation of entirely new technologies that will have a major impact on a field of research," and could also be used for the acquisition of new equipment that will "change the direction of research in a field," Princeton explained in a press release.
The fund is unique in that it will does not need to be spent evenly from year to year. The university announced,
The dean for research will have discretion to recommend that no grants be awarded in years when there are no sufficiently compelling proposals, and to spend down principal as well as income in years when there are many compelling ideas. Funding may be for one year or over multiple years.
Eric Schmidt joins a distinguished roster of technology notables who have donated to Princeton over the years, including Meg Whitman, who gifted $30 million to the school in 2002 to construct a new dorm.