Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, have created a $25 million endowment fund at Princeton University for the invention, development and utilization of cutting-edge technology that has the capacity to transform research in the natural sciences and engineering.

Support from the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund will be awarded through a campus-wide peer-reviewed competition under the auspices of the University's dean for research. The first competition will be announced later this fall.

"This fund will allow Princeton's scientists and engineers to explore truly innovative ideas that need the creation or application of new technologies, including the kinds of technological breakthroughs that most funding sources are too risk-averse to support," said President Shirley M. Tilghman. "We are deeply grateful to Eric and Wendy not only for providing this support, but for providing the capacity and flexibility to make investments that are likely to have the broadest and most transformative impact."

Eric Schmidt earned a BSE in electrical engineering from Princeton in 1976 and served as a Princeton trustee from 2004 to 2008.

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October 2009