Millions donated to URI towards neuroscience
By: Chelsea Priest
The crowd at URI cheered this morning for the largest independent
donation ever made to the University. Former CVS Caremark CEO and URI grad, Tom
Ryan, along with his wife Cathy gave the school 15 million dollars. The money
will go towards the development of The Ryan Neurological Institute.
Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, are all devastating diseases
with no cure, with the donation Thursday, URI received a major boost towards researching
treatment and finding a solution to neurological diseases.
Tom Ryan explained his personal connection to Alzheimer's, “I
had a personal impact of Alzheimer's with my dad. It's a sad disease, it's a
family disease.”
One in three Americans will be affected by a neuro-disease or
disorder. In 2011 the URI Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program was established
with the hope of working towards a cure for neuro-degenerative diseases. Now,
the multi-million dollar donation will accelerate the research.
Nasser Zawia, Director of the URI Interdisciplinary Neuroscience
Program says, “If we pool all our efforts together like we did for cancer we
can deal with this devastating disease.”
Miriam Dash is a first year graduate student in the program. She
says, “It's going to help us be able to do so many more experiments and open up
so many more doors to further our research and look into so many more different
aspects of Alzheimer's that we probably weren't going to be able to do during my
time here.”
To maximize the state's efforts in neuroscience the new institute
will collaborate with other's like it in Rhode
Island. Aseel Eid is a second year graduate student she
says, “I really hope that with this new goal and collaboration with Lifespan
and Brown that we can really help as many people as we can and potentially do
something great.”
Neuroscience is considered one of the last scientific frontiers
where major discoveries can still be made. All the more reason for the Ryan's donation,
he goes on, “To actually elevate and raise the level of awareness, To attract
world class researchers and research dollars, dollars make this happen, so
hopefully the ultimate goal is we slow down and cure this disease.”
