Minerva Foundation

Last updated
Minerva Foundation
Founded1983
FounderHelen and Elwin Marg
Type Corporation
Focus Neuroscience
Location
Area served
US
Method Research
Awards
Website http://www.minervaberkeley.org

The Minerva Foundation is a US-based non-profit, scientific and charitable foundation. It is headquartered in Berkeley, California. It was established in 1983 by Helen and Elwin Marg. [1] Other than the founders, directors include Richard M. Buxbaum, Lawrence W. Stark, Semir Zeki, Tamia Marg Anderson, Lila S. Crutchfield, and Vero Bollow.

Berkeley, California City in California, United States

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2010 census recorded a population of 112,580.

Elwin Marg was an American optometrist and neuroscientist at the University of California at Berkeley. He was the first to receive a PhD from UC Berkeley School of Optometry. It was he who gave the name electrooculogram, a technique for measurement of nerve impulse in the eye.

Semir Zeki FMedSci FRS is a British neurobiologist who has specialised in studying the primate visual brain and more recently the neural correlates of affective states, such as the experience of love, desire and beauty that are generated by sensory inputs within the field of neuroesthetics. He was educated at University College London (UCL) where he was Henry Head Research Fellow of the Royal Society before being appointed Professor of Neurobiology. Since 2008 he has been Professor of Neuroesthetics at UCL.

Contents

The foundation was named after Minerva, the Roman goddess of, among other things, wisdom and medicine. [2]

Minerva Roman goddess of wisdom and sponsor of arts, trade, and defense

Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare and the sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. From the second century BC onward, the Romans equated her with the Greek goddess Athena, though the Romans did not stress her relation to battle and warfare as the Greeks did.

Focus

Minerva Foundation is a not-for-profit, charitable foundation, dedicated to promoting novel approaches to the study of the visual brain. Since its inception in 1983, the foundation has honored exceptional scientists with its Golden Brain award and brought leading research to the general public through its series of conferences and other forums on creativity, perception, and brain science.

Minerva House

Minerva Foundation maintains a large Victorian building originally built for Charles C. Boudrow (c. 1830–1918), a Massachusetts-born master mariner, in downtown Berkeley near the University of California at Berkeley campus. The house was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark on 21 June 1976. It was bought by Frank Leba and Kelly Brown in 1994, who restored and renovated the entire building. They even received a BAHA Preservation Award in 2006. [3] [4] The Minerva foundation finally acquired it in 2008.

A master mariner is a licensed mariner who holds the highest grade of seafarer qualification; namely, an unlimited master's license. Such a license is labelled unlimited because it has no limits on the tonnage, power, or geographic location of the vessel that the holder of the license is allowed to serve upon. A master mariner would therefore be allowed to serve as the master of a merchant ship of any size, of any type, operating anywhere in the world, and it reflects the highest level of professional qualification amongst mariners and deck officers.

Related Research Articles

University of California, Berkeley Public university in California, USA

The University of California, Berkeley is a public research university in Berkeley, California. It was founded in 1868 and serves as the flagship campus of the ten campuses of the University of California. Berkeley has since grown to instruct over 40,000 students in approximately 350 undergraduate and graduate degree programs covering numerous disciplines.

Newmans Own American non-profit food company

Newman's Own is a food company founded by the late actor Paul Newman and author A. E. Hotchner in 1982. The company gives 100% of the after-tax profits from the sale of its products to Newman's Own Foundation, a private non-profit foundation which in turn gives the money to various educational and charitable organizations.

Charitable organization non-profit organization with a charitable purpose

A charitable organization or charity is a non-profit organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being.

Paul Alivisatos American scientist specialising in chemistry

Paul Alivisatos is an American scientist of Greek descent who has been hailed as a pioneer in nanomaterials development, and is an internationally recognized authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals and their use in biomedical and renewable energy applications. He is ranked fifth among the world's 100 top chemists in the list released by Thomson Reuters. In 2009, he was named the Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and in 2014 he was named a laureate for the National Medal of Science. In 2016 he was named U.C. Berkeley's Vice Chancellor for Research. As of July 1, 2017, he is University of California, Berkeley's Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, and will continue on as Vice Chancellor for Research on an interim basis.

Downtown Berkeley station Rapid transit station in San Francisco Bay Area

Downtown Berkeley is a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station located in Downtown Berkeley of Berkeley, California, United States, one of three stations in the city.

Stephen Michael Kosslyn is an American psychologist, neuroscientist, and expert on the science of learning. Kosslyn is President and CEO of Foundry College, an online two-year college designed to help working adults develop skills and knowledge that will not be automated in the foreseeable future. Prior to that, Kosslyn was Founding Dean and Chief Academic Officer of the Minerva Schools at KGI. And before that, he was the John Lindsley Professor of Psychology in Memory of William James and Dean of Social Science at Harvard University.

Housing at the University of California, Berkeley includes student housing facilities run by the office of Residential and Student Service Programs (RSSP). Housing is also offered by off-campus entities such as fraternities and sororities and the Berkeley Student Cooperative (BSC).

The Annenberg Foundation is a family foundation that provides funding and support to non-profit organizations in the United States and around the world. Some of the Foundation's core initiatives are the Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) project, which funds many educational television shows broadcast on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) public television in the United States as well as The Annenberg Community Beach House, The Annenberg Space for Photography, Metabolic Studio, explore.org, Wallis Annenberg PetSpace and the Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts.

The Fletcher Foundation was a nonprofit foundation that supported civil rights, education, and environmental education. The foundation supported efforts to develop a more just society with more equal opportunities for more of the population primarily by leveraging the financial and non-financial contributions of Fletcher Asset Management, the Fletcher Family including New York financier and philanthropist Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., and others. Fletcher Asset Management has been accused of fraud related to its management of funds and the value of pledges Fletcher's charitable pledges are in dispute.. The Foundation lost its tax-exempt status in 2018.

Samuel Heywood was a prominent early resident of Berkeley, California. He served as the President of the Town Board of Trustees during 1889-1890.

The Gruber Prize in Neuroscience, established in 2004, is one of three international awards worth US$500,000 made by the Gruber Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

National Register of Historic Places listings in Alameda County, California Wikimedia list article

This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Alameda County, California.

The Berkeley Historical Society is a non-profit association in Berkeley, California dedicated to researching, preserving and sharing the history of the city. It was founded in 1978. Its primary activity is the operation of the Berkeley History Center, a museum, library and archive located in the Veterans Memorial Building at 1931 Center Street near the old city hall. It is staffed entirely by volunteers. It presents exhibits, walking tours, lectures and other events and conducts oral histories.

A. C. Schweinfurth American architect

A. C. Schweinfurth (1864–1900), born Albert Cicero Schweinfurth, was an American architect. He is associated with the First Bay Tradition.

Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd (Berkeley, California) United States historic place

The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd is an historic Carpenter Gothic style Episcopal church building located at 1001 Hearst Street at Ninth Street in Berkeley, California. Built in 1878, it was designed in the Carpenter Gothic style of architecture by architect Charles L. Bugbee who was associated with his father Samuel C. Bugbee in the San Francisco firm of S. C. Bugbee & Son. Charles L. Bugbee patterned it after the Carpenter Gothic style Mendocino Presbyterian Church, which the firm had designed in 1867. While all of the Mendocino church's exterior walls are of board and batten siding, only the upper walls of Good Shepherd are board and batten while the lower walls are of Dutch lap weatherboarding. Both churches feature tall side-entrance bell towers, steep gabled roofs and lancet windows, but according to writer Daniella Thompson: "...the Church of the Good Shepherd is considerably more ornate and playful than its severe Presbyterian model, ..." On December 15, 1975 Good Shepherd became the second building in Berkeley to be named an Historic Landmark. On December 1, 1986, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Church of the Good Shepherd-Episcopal.

Lilian "Lillie" Belle Bridgman (1866–1948) was an American scientist and architect. A childhood accident resulted in a broken leg and contributed to a lifelong impairment that required her to use a crutch. This condition may have changed her focus from helping with outdoor farm work to studying, writing and reading. It did not prevent her from hiking in the Berkeley Hills and the Sierras. After working first as a science teacher and writer, she changed her profession in mid-life and followed her dream of becoming an architect.

St. Johns Presbyterian Church (Berkeley, California) United States historic place

The Julia Morgan Theater, located in the former St. John's Presbyterian Church, is a historic building in Berkeley, California designed by architect Julia Morgan. The wooden building at 2640 College Avenue is built in the American Craftsman style with an exterior wood-shingle finish known as Berkeley Brown Shingle. The church building was desanctified and sold when the congregation moved to a new building in 1974. It now houses the Berkeley Playhouse. The structure is #8 on the city of Berkeley's list of historic landmarks. In 1975 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The Golden Brain Award is an international science award in the field of neuroscience. It is given by the Berkeley-based Minerva Foundation every year since 1985. The foundation specifically aims at fundamental contributions to research in vision and the brain. The award is given usually in Berkeley at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. The Golden Brain is a trophy of a gold-plated model of the human brain attached to a bronze base.

Allanoke Manor or Allanoke, also known under the variant spelling Allenoke or Allenoke Manor, or as the Allen G. Freeman House, is a historic private residence in Berkeley, California. The main part of Allanoke has the address 1777 Le Roy Avenue, and its former carriage house has the address 2533 Ridge Road, each about one block north of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The home was declared a City of Berkeley Landmark in November, 1986.

References

  1. Gerald Westheimer (2010). "IN MEMORIAM: Elwin Marg". senate.universityofcalifornia.edu. University of California. Archived from the original on 7 September 2014. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
  2. Minerva. "About Minerva Foundation". www.minervaberkeley.org. Minerva Foundation. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
  3. Daniella Thompson (8 September 2006). "East Bay Then and Now: Shipping Magnate's Mansion Is Rare Survivor on Oxford Street". The Berkeley Daily Planet. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
  4. Daniella Thompson (2006). "Captain Charles C. Boudrow House". berkeleyheritage.com. Retrieved 4 September 2013.