The chairman of the board of Cisco Systems and his wife have donated $50-million for the proposed Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, which will include two new science centers to be built near the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and facilities for university research.
The gift, from John P. and Tashia F. Morgridge, will be matched dollar for dollar by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, an independent organization that raises money to support scientific research at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
The Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery is a proposed project that would bring together scientists from various disciplines to conduct research on disease and medicine. The project developer is the Alumni Research Foundation, but officials said that after the institutes are built, ownership of one of them will be transferred to the university.
Another $50-million in public support for the institutes, proposed by Wisconsin’s governor, Jim Doyle, a Democrat, is subject to approval by the State Building Commission.
One of the institutes, to be used primarily by the university, will be public and will use government grants. The other, to be named the Morgridge Institute for Research, will be private. It will be designed to let scientists make faster breakthroughs because they will not have to comply with restrictions on the use of government funds for human-embryonic-stem-cell research, for example.
John D. Wiley, the university’s chancellor, said in a written statement that “the Morgridges’ generosity has triggered a public-private partnership that will enable us to probe the convergence of various sciences and make the kinds of discoveries needed to protect human health and expand scientific knowledge.”
The Morgridges also gave the university $31-million in 2004 to renovate the education building. Ms. Morgridge is a retired special-education teacher.