Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife will invest 250 million dollars in the new research laboratory in Chicago

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, are investing $250 million to create a biomedical research facility in Chicago that will bring together researchers from Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, officials announced Thursday. .

The location of the facility – called the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago – has not yet been determined.

Chicago beat out 58 other proposals from across the country to land funding for the facility.

Governor JB Pritzker announced that the state will kick in $25 million to support the project. The governor said it “will take medical research to a new level.”

Scientists will be tasked with developing new technologies to study and measure human biology that will use embedded sensors and probes to gather biological signals from human tissue with unprecedented resolution.

Chicago’s biohub will be the second such facility funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The first was built in San Francisco with the goal of creating a network of biohub facilities to bring together leading research institutions in different regions.

Chan and Zuckerberg are co-founders and co-CEOs of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

“The Chicago biohub is going to build miniaturized sensors to understand how cells work together and interact in tissues,” Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the investment. “We are then going to use these technologies to measure and understand the inflammation in living human tissue because it plays a huge role in our overall health. About 50% of all deaths can be attributed to inflammation-related diseases, including cancer, heart disease and dementia, so it is quite critical to make progress here.

Chan added, “And I think one of the things that’s really cool is that if we can instrument these tissues and figure out what’s going wrong early, then we can do something about it early.”

Zuckerberg concluded by saying, “And at the end of the day, the breakthroughs from these biohubs will bring scientists closer to this goal of eradicating all disease.”

Shana O. Kelley, professor of chemistry and biomedical engineering at Northwestern, will serve as the hub’s president.

“Huvet’s ultimate goal is to unite the region’s best researchers to improve our understanding of inflammation, which could potentially lead to new treatments for the inflammatory conditions that underlie the disease,” according to a statement from Northwestern University.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was founded in 2015 to help solve some of society’s toughest challenges—from eradicating disease and improving education to meeting the needs of local communities.