“Explore the Gaps.” A Closer Look at the Kavli Foundation’s Neuroscience Grantmaking

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In 1986, Omni magazine editors Judith Hooper and Dick Teresi wrote a book called “The Three Pound Universe,” laying out a series of riveting new discoveries in the somewhat nascent field of neuroscience. As the title suggests, the authors presented the brain as an unimaginably vast and mysterious organ, and the world’s leading neuroscientists had only begun to scratch the surface of its capabilities. “The great frontier of the 1980s is neuroscience,” the pair wrote.

Thirty-six years later, I ran the metaphor by Kavli Foundation Life Sciences Director Amy Bernard, and she told me it’s as relevant as ever. “The brain is the most complex system known to humankind,” she said. “We still don’t have a system of understanding the brain as an organ like the way we do a kidney or a lung.”

Philanthropy is working to change that. For the Los Angeles-based Kavli Foundation, that means awarding grants, funding Kavli Institutes around the world devoted to neuroscience research as well as other fields of study, and awarding Kavli Prizes annually to researchers in the field. “We’re trying to address and explore the gaps in terms of what we know about the fundamental human brain structure — what it’s made of and how it functions — and then getting to a scientifically driven, well-clarified understanding of causative agents in disease, as well as how the brain thinks,” Bernard said.

The foundation is also ramping up grantmaking efforts in areas that typically fall outside of the purview of federal agencies. Earlier this year, it provided seed funding to create a global data governance framework to incentivize cross-border collaboration. It’s also about to roll out a new focus area, Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems, looking at how man-made changes to the climate can influence the circuitry of the brain.

“Some government funders may not necessarily be attuned to this kind of work or have it in their mandate,” Bernard said. “But philanthropists can say, ‘This is a need; this is how we’re going to connect different constituents from around the world.’”

A major science funder

Created in 2000 by Norwegian-American businessman and scientist Fred Kavli, the Kavli Foundation advances basic science in four fields — astrophysics, nanoscience, neuroscience and theoretical physics. It funds Kavli Institutes devoted to these areas around the world, awards the $1 million Kavli Prizes every two years, and also supports science communications work through science journalism workshops and the endowment of the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards.

According to the foundation’s most recent Form 990 for the fiscal year ending December 2020, it had $637 million in total assets and made $36 million in charitable disbursements. Last year, my colleague Paul Karon spoke with outgoing CEO Bob Conn, who had been in the role since 2009. Conn was succeeded by Cynthia Friend, who was on the Harvard University faculty and served as director of the Rowland Institute, a science research nonprofit.

As director of life sciences, Bernard oversees the foundation’s grantmaking and collaborative partnerships in its nanoscience and neuroscience divisions. Prior to joining Kavli in 2021, Bernard spent about 16 years at the Allen Institute, the bioscience research nonprofit founded by billionaire philanthropist Paul G. Allen in 2003. From 2009 to 2016, she led the Research & Development and Structured Science divisions for the Allen Institute for Brain Science, where she oversaw initiatives such as the Allen Human Brain Atlas, which was the subject of a recent feature by IP’s Karon.

A focus on basic research

To put the Kavli Foundation’s mission in context, researchers often refer to the “research continuum” consisting of four categories, each serving a distinct purpose — basic or discovery research, clinical research, population-based research, and translational research.

Basic research is typically defined as studies that span disciplines and lead to new knowledge. However, precisely because basic research takes the longer view and may not translate into cures or commercialized treatment for years, some funders focus their attention on phases later in the continuum, like clinical research, where clinical trials test the safety and efficacy of new treatments. 

The Kavli Foundation believes that basic science is the “underlayment for all of these other applications of either neuroscience or neurology research,” Bernard said. “There’s a very short distance to applying it to any number of different clinical areas, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, of course, but also things like basic cancer, so that’s really where we focus a lot of our philanthropy.”

The Kavli Foundation has two programs within its neuroscience priority area. The first, Open Data in Neuroscience, aims to create “mechanisms to leverage vast quantities of data generated by neuroscientists and to fuel novel discoveries through open data.” The second, Observe and Measure the Mind, supports efforts to accelerate basic research in the field. The foundation has endowed and supports seven Kavli Institutes devoted to neuroscience and was one of the early supporters of the BRAIN Initiative, a cross-sector initiative focused on revolutionizing the understanding of the human brain.

As far as big recent gifts are concerned, in April, the foundation gave $5 million to the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind (KIBM) at the University of California San Diego and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The foundation established and endowed KIBM in 2004 with $13.5 million and established a matching challenge to drive cross-disciplinary research for the brain and mind. The institute has received matching gifts from billionaire Qualcomm cofounder Irwin Jacobs and his wife Joan, among many others.

Fostering collaboration

Technological advances over the past 20 years have generated an endless torrent of data generated by researchers from around the world. Yet the neuroscience field lacks standardized governance mechanisms to ensure that researchers can safely share and access this data. “Who fills that gap of making sure a researcher in France can compare their data with, say, somebody in Australia?” Bernard said.

One answer is private philanthropy. In March, the foundation announced it had provided seed funding to Associate Professor Franco Pestilli at the University of Texas at Austin to develop the International Data Governance Framework. The foundation hopes the project will lead to the development of a more robust infrastructure of policies and help connect researchers. “There’s a lot of untapped potential here,” she said. “It’s a challenge and an opportunity to incentivize researchers to collaborate and get the good science you need to understand the varieties of the brain.”

Bernard is also personally revisiting the idea of collaboration. She recently co-authored a paper calling for the creation of “next-generation brain observatories” based on the same collaborative model that has driven advancements in fields like physics and astronomy. For Bernard, this work falls under the rubric of “triggering thinking around not just a single investigator looking through their microscope, but working with others as a community.”

Looking ahead, the foundation will be rolling out its new focus area, Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems, exploring how anthropogenic (human-caused) changes to the climate influence neurons and circuits of the brain. The term “changing ecosystems” includes climate change, but also habitat degradation, noise and light pollution, and microplastic proliferation. Bernard and her colleague, Kavli Science Program Fellow Angie Michaiel, will publish a review paper in the coming weeks providing an overview of this field and making the case for philanthropic support so researchers can be better equipped to predict how neuronal systems may adapt to future changes.

“We want to start asking questions to determine if changes are happening at a fundamental neurobiogical framework level,” Bernard said. “As a grantmaker, we’re focusing on pulling together researchers from disparate fields to get them to think about those questions. Then, we’ll see whether we can set a direction for the field and can pay things forward with funding.”