UC Irvine will rename its life sciences school in honor of biotechnology pioneer Charlie Dunlop following a $50 million gift from the Orange County businessman.
The university said the money will be used for an endowment fund that will usher in a “new era of discovery,” bolstering academic and research programs within the school.
“Charlie Dunlop’s dedication to this vision and his deep generosity will help UC Irvine set a standard that other biology programs in the U.S. can follow,” Chancellor Howard Gillman said in a statement.
The School of Biological Sciences will now be called the Charlie Dunlop School of Biological Sciences.
Dunlop, a graduate of UC San Diego, founded Ambry Genetics in 1999. He grew the company from his small office above a Harley-Davidson motorcycle shop into a leading genetic testing company with 700 employees.
In 2017, the Aliso Viejo-based company was purchased by a Japanese manufacturer in an operation valued up to a billion dollars.
The Dunlop company made Headlines for making the genetic data of the people he analyzed publicly available with the idea that researchers could use it to study genes related to certain diseases. Dunlop said at the time that his experience with prostate cancer fueled his decision to make the anonymous genetic information public.
Dunlop said his company hired heavily from UC Irvine and credited the school for teaching much of its workforce.
“It would have been impossible to build a business like Ambry without UC Irvine,” he said in a statement.
The School of Biological Sciences had previously been named after faculty member Francisco J. Ayala, a famous geneticist who gave the school $10 millionn had earned from his highly profitable vineyards. Ayala's name was removed from the school in 2018 after a university investigation found that sexually harassed several faculty members and graduate students. At the time, the donation was the largest ever made by a faculty member.
