Cornell University has announced a $15 million commitment to the College of Human Ecology (CHE) from Giving Pledge signatory Irwin M. Jacobs (’54, BEE ’56) and the Jacobs family to support its precision nutrition and health center.
The gift will endow and name the Joan Klein Jacobs Center for Precision Nutrition and Health, which aims to connect individual-level nutrition guidance to population-level policies, and adds to a $10 million commitment from the Jacobs family in 2023 to establish the center. The gift will endow core support and discretionary resources including funding for postdoctoral fellowships, faculty innovation grants, experiential learning funds for students and other opportunities to enhance interdisciplinary collaboration across the university’s Ithaca, Cornell Tech, and Weill Cornell Medicine campuses.
The naming gift honors Joan Klein Jacobs (’54), a CHE alumna who died in May at the age of 91. She and her husband, Irwin Jacobs—founding chairman and CEO emeritus of Qualcomm—are longtime university supporters. A $133 million gift in 2013 created the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech…