SC Connecticut News

Yale University has signed a letter of intent to receive a series of gifts from the John B. Pierce Laboratory and Foundation, expected to amount to $20 million over 24 months. The gifts are intended to preserve Pierce’s mission of promoting educational, technical, or scientific work in several fields.

“We are grateful to the John B. Pierce Laboratory and Foundation for these generous gifts, and we are honored to advance Yale’s research and teaching in areas that significantly align with Pierce’s history and mission,” said Michael Crair, Yale’s vice provost for research. “We expect the professorships and graduate student fellowships that these gifts create will significantly advance scholarship in a number of scientific disciplines that honor the legacy of John B. Pierce.”

Pierce’s Laboratory and Foundation have been formally affiliated with Yale for nearly 60 years. With its gifts to Yale, Pierce expects to wind down its own Laboratory research operations and Foundation activities in 2025, anticipating that its gifts will foster greater scientific research productivity and strengthen the impact of Pierce’s assets.

In its announcement, the John B. Pierce Foundation said the gifts will permanently endow four to five Yale professorships as well as several graduate fellowships. New Pierce professorships and graduate fellowships will be allocated among the following Yale schools: the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the School of the Environment, the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and/or the School of Architecture. Each new position will carry the John B. Pierce name, and the new Pierce professorships will engage in research and teaching in fields that are modern descendants of those laid out by John B. Pierce more than a century ago.

“As the 100th anniversary of the Pierce Foundation approaches, our board of directors and management team have been evaluating various strategic options to best position Pierce’s resources to preserve and fulfill its mission over the long term,” said Margaret Penny Mason, president, J.B. Pierce Foundation and The John B. Pierce Laboratory Inc. “This envisioned transaction with Yale provides the scale, stability, and structure to assure that the Pierce mission is fulfilled in perpetuity.”