£40m donation for Imperial College London
Howard Lake | 4 June 2014 | News
Imperial College London has received a donation of £40 million from Michael Uren OBE and the Michael Uren Foundation.
The gift is the largest ever received by Imperial. It is the largest gift ever made to a London university by an alumnus, and is also one of the largest made to any UK university. By comparison, according to the 2013 Ross Case survey report, the total amount donated to all UK universities in 2013 was £660 million.
The donation will fund the construction of the Michael Uren Biomedical Engineering Hub, which will house research into new and affordable medical technology, helping people affected by a diverse range of medical conditions.
(l-r) Sir Keith O’Nions, President of Imperial College London, and Michael Uren OBE
About Michael Uren OBE
Uren graduated from Imperial in Mechanical Engineering in 1943. He founded and developed cement manufacturer Civil and Marine Ltd.
He has already given multi-million support for Imperial, including the College’s MSk Lab. He is one of the UK’s most generous philanthropists in the fields of medical research, education, the armed forces and conservation of wildlife.
He described it as “an honour” to help “this great university”, mentioning how it inspired him as a young engineering student in 1940 “when London was under attack every night”. He added:
“Medical teaching and research didn’t exist at Imperial in my day, but it has evolved into an institution where the work between engineering and medicine is today one of its outstanding strengths. Imperial has always applied academic excellence for the greater good, and I am thrilled by the prospect of this Biomedical Engineering Hub doing exactly that.”
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Imperial’s fundraising team
Imperial has invested considerably in its fundraising capacity over the last two years. It has established a new fundraising division, and nearly doubled its development staff team.
Angela Bowen, Deputy Director of Development, said:
“It has been a pleasure to meet Michael Uren. We have been touched by the warmth of his memories of his days as a student at Imperial, and by his generosity in making this gift, which will do so much to support life-changing research in biomedical engineering at Imperial.”
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.