Research

Rigorous. Ethical. Open to all. Yale’s research enterprise is a perpetual engine of exploration and innovation.

At Yale, expanding knowledge can mean many things—a new reading of an ancient text, a new therapy for early-onset diabetes, or a breakthrough in quantum computing. People around the world look to Yale to advance knowledge because we have extraordinary expertise across a range of disciplines. Your gifts can help us to sustain our traditional scholarly strengths, especially in the humanities and social sciences, while making new inroads into burgeoning fields of science, engineering, and medicine:

• Important discoveries can require decades of persistent fundamental research. Yale provides an ideal environment for basic research, backed by reliable funding of faculty and graduate students, state-of-the-art laboratories, the latest equipment, and the committed support of outside funding agencies. Donor support of this enterprise, from start to finish, is essential.
• At Yale, conditions are just right—not too big, not too small—for people to collaborate across disciplines. We’ve built this advantage into our science strategy, so that engineers pair with biologists and chemists partner with climate scientists. Funding for cross-disciplinary science can leverage shared insights and accelerate the pace of discovery.
• Experimental science requires increasingly precise, sophisticated equipment, along with tremendous capacities for high-speed computing and data storage. Yale makes continuous investments in shared equipment, core facilities, clean rooms, and specialized staff for operation and maintenance.
• Early career scientists often pursue novel concepts that may be too risky for institutional funders like the NSF or NIH. Seed funding for proof-of-concept research enables these researchers to build out their laboratories, test their ideas, and supply the evidence they will need in the future to win traditional grant funding.
• In vital fields from the environment to medicine, breakthrough ideas can have immediate applications, yielding new approaches, technologies, or cures that improve people’s lives. Innovation and accelerator funds can help to rapidly bring these ideas to market.

Donor support is key to discovery and innovation. We need state-of-the-art buildings and equipment to make cutting-edge experimentation possible; these in turn enable Yale to recruit the best students and faculty.