Portland Business Journal by Susanne Stevens, Web Editor
Date: Thursday, December 13, 2013, 7:22 a.m. PST
Reed College will use a $3 million gift from Amgen to create a chair of chemical biology.
The California-based biotech company donated the money in honor of Roger Perlmutter, a former Amgen executive vice president of research and development and a Reed alum.
The donation for what will be named the Amgen-Perlmutter Chair is the largest corporate gift in Reed’s history.
“I owe my interest in fundamental research to my education at Reed, which imbued me with an appreciation for rigorous scientific inquiry,” said Perlmutter in a statement. “Together with talented colleagues at Amgen, I was able to apply principles first learned at Reed to discover breakthrough medicines that have benefited patients around the world.”
Reed is nationally recognized for its strength in biology and chemistry, ranking second and fourth, respectively, as the undergraduate college for students that ultimately attain PhDs in those fields.
The donation pushed Reed past its $200 million Centennial Campaign goal, bringing the total raised to more than $203 million.