Paul Allen
by Justine Amodeo
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| Paul Allen |
Paul Allen has launched rockets into space. He owns the Portland Trail Blazers and the Seattle Seahawks. He joined a lawsuit in 2014 to force the Department of Interior to better account for the environmental impact of mining coal on public land. He co-founded Microsoft. He plays the guitar.
His diverse interests are prioritized:. As his social media profile describes him, he is "a philanthropist, investor, entrepreneur, Seahawks and Blazers team owner, guitarist, neuroscience supporter, space pioneer & Microsoft co-founder." For the past 20 years he has given more than $2 billion to 1,500 non profits, from battling Ebola in Africa, to the creation of museums devoted to rock music and vintage computers, to animal conservation, to building institutes devoted to learning about the human cell, brains and artificial intelligence.
In 2003, Allen contributed $100 million to create the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a research facility dedicated to performing innovative basic research on the brain and distributing its discoveries to researchers around the world. In 2006, the Allen Institute completed its inaugural project, the Allen Brain Atlas, a Web-based, three-dimensional map of gene expression in the mouse brain which is freely accessible online. Detailing more than 21,000 genes at the cellular level, the Atlas helps lead scientists to new insights and propel the field of neuroscience forward by reverse-engineering the human brain and building one from scratch. 
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| Film, Racing to Extinction |
The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, launched in 2014, is asking the most profound AI "what ifs" of our time and letting top scientists find answers. Based on the model of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence is intended to become a major hub for AI knowledge and research. His most recent project, the Allen Institute for
Cell Science, announced in February 2016 the appointment of its first four
scientific directors. The directors will build out collaborative teams of
researchers who will develop and incorporate diverse technologies and
approaches at a large scale to study the cell as an integrated system. Their
first project, the Animated Cell, will be a multi-scale, spatiotemporal,
animated model of how the cell executes its functions and what goes wrong in
disease.“The Allen Institute for Cell Science is committed to doing
unprecedented work in bioscience, observing and modeling the complexity of
cells in real time, and working in diverse teams led by these directors will be
fundamental to their success,” said Allan Jones, Ph.D., CEO of the Allen
Institute.
Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates and remained the company's chief technologist until he left in 1983, is also founder of Experience Music Project, Seattle's critically-acclaimed interactive music museum; the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame; and the Flying Heritage Collection, an assemblage of rare World War II aircraft restored to flying condition and shared with the public. In 2004 Allen funded SpaceShipOne, the first privately-backed effort to successfully put a civilian in suborbital space. Vulcan Productions, Allen's independent film production company commited to action igniting social documentary storytelling, has produced, among others, the "Evolution" series on PBS; The Blues, executive-produced by Martin Scorsese in conjunction with Allen and Jody Patton; the Emmy-award winning Rx for Survival A Global Health Challenge; and the Peabody award-winning Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial, 2013's Girl Rising , a partnership with First Lady Michelle Obama to help raise awareness about educating girls to break the cycles of poverty, and the soon to be released wake up call to humanity, Racing Extinction.
Allen said in a recent interview with the New York Times that he is "trying to transmit the visions of creativity and build institutions that are incredibly catalytic to their fields . "It always comes back to what you are passionate about," Allen told the paper. Through philanthropy, he said, "you are transmitting your hopes, and keeping them going in the future."
Page created on 3/9/2016 3:08:39 PM
Last edited 3/9/2016 3:08:39 PM
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