 | |
| Founded | 2006 |
|---|---|
| Founder | |
| Location |
|
Revenue (2015) | $16,645,600 [1] |
| Expenses (2015) | $37,426,861 [1] |
| Website | theschmidtfamilyfoundation |
The Schmidt Family Foundation is a private foundation created in 2006 by Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google, and his wife Wendy Schmidt, to address issues pertaining to sustainability and the responsible use of natural resources. [2]
The foundation was established in 2006 by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, with assets valued at over $1 billion, [3] which included $307 million in Google Class A stock. [4]
The foundation is focused on the application of new knowledge and innovation and advancement original research in science, energy, and biosphere sustainability, often in collaboration with other organizations. Its initial specific focus areas are environmental preservation and education. [5]
Since 2006, the Foundation has made grants to organizations, including the Energy Foundation, the California Academy of Sciences, the Regeneration Project, the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health, Green for All, Grist magazine, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Environmental Media Association, and the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University. [6] [7] [8]
Between 2006 and 2011, it made a five-year grant of $1 million per year to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
It has supported several Schmidt family projects. In 2010, it made a $1 million grant to the Marine Science and Technology Foundation, [4] a private operating foundation founded in 2010 by Eric Schmidt. [9] [10]
The 11th Hour Project was founded by Wendy Schmidt in 2005, and operates as part of the foundation. It works to raise awareness about climate change and renewable energy sources, and operates as part of the foundation. [4] The project awards various grants and helped distribute the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth . [11] It also provided initial operating budget for the nonprofit news organization Climate Central. [12] [13]
ReMain Nantucket, formed in 2007, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the foundation, dedicated to the economic, social, and environmental vitality of downtown Nantucket, Massachusetts. [14] [15] [16]
The Schmidt Ocean Institute founded in 2009, is a separate private foundation [17] established by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, that has received grants from the Schmidt Family Foundation for acquiring and operating the Institute’s oceanographic research vessels, including the Falkor.
The Foundation has provided support for the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge. a challenge award offered by the X Prize Foundation for efficient capturing of crude oil from ocean water, inspired by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It was announced in July 2010, and $1.3 million in prizes, were awarded in October 2011. [18] [19] It also supports the $1.5 million Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health X Prize for work on ocean acidification. [20] [21]
In March 2013, the Foundation and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation launched the Schmidt-MacArthur Fellowship, a global fellowship program for developing the skills and innovative mindset needed for the circular economy. [22]
Eric Emerson Schmidt is an American technology businessman and software engineer. He is known for being the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, executive chairman of Google from 2011 to 2015, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017, and Technical Advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020.
Willie Wei-Hock Soon is a Malaysian astrophysicist and aerospace engineer employed as a part-time externally funded researcher at the Solar and Stellar Physics (SSP) Division of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Peter H. Diamandis is a Greek American engineer, physician, and entrepreneur best known for being founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation, cofounder and executive chairman of Singularity University and coauthor of The New York Times bestsellers Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think and BOLD: How to Go Big, Create Wealth, and Impact the World. He is former CEO and cofounder of the Zero Gravity Corporation, cofounder and vice chairman of Space Adventures Ltd., founder and chairman of the Rocket Racing League, cofounder of the International Space University, cofounder of Planetary Resources, cofounder of Celularity, founder of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, vice chairman and cofounder of Human Longevity, Inc.
XPRIZE is a non-profit organization that designs and hosts public competitions intended to encourage technological development to benefit humanity. Their board of trustees include James Cameron, Larry Page, Arianna Huffington, and Ratan Tata among others.
The David Suzuki Foundation is a science-based non-profit environmental organization headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with offices in Montreal and Toronto. It was established as a federally registered Canadian charity on January 1, 1991. By 2007, it had 40,000 donors. Its mission is to protect nature while balancing human needs. It is supported entirely by Foundation grants and donations and by 2012, 90% of its donors were Canadian. By 2007, the Foundation employed about seventy-five staff members.
The Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science is an academic and research institution for the study of oceanography and the atmospheric sciences within the University of Miami (UM). It is located on a 16 acre campus on Virginia Key in Miami, Florida. It is the only subtropical applied and basic marine and atmospheric research institute in the continental United States.
Stefan Rahmstorf is a German oceanographer and climatologist. Since 2000, he has been a Professor of Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam University. He received his Ph.D. in oceanography from Victoria University of Wellington (1990). His work focuses on the role of ocean currents in climate change. He was one of the lead authors of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
The Cape Wind Project was a proposed offshore wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, United States. It was approved but then lost several key contracts and suffered from several licensing and legislative setbacks. The developer, Jim Gordon of Energy Management Inc, eventually terminated the lease rights for the site in late 2017.
The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is a council, chartered in each administration with a broad mandate to advise the President of the United States on science and technology. The current PCAST was established by Executive Order 13226 on September 30, 2001, by President George W. Bush, was re-chartered by President Obama's April 21, 2010, Executive Order 13539, and was most recently re-chartered by President Trump's October 22, 2019, Executive Order 13895.
Brian Paul Schmidt is the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University (ANU). He was previously a Distinguished Professor, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and astrophysicist at the University's Mount Stromlo Observatory and Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. He is known for his research in using supernovae as cosmological probes. He currently holds an Australia Research Council Federation Fellowship and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2012. Schmidt shared both the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, making him the only Montana-born Nobel laureate.
The USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies is an environmental research and education facility run by the University of Southern California. It is an organized research unit that encompasses a wide range of faculty and topics across the university as well as operating a marine laboratory at the edge of Two Harbors, California on Catalina Island approximately 22 miles south-southwest of Los Angeles.
Climate Central is a nonprofit news organization that analyzes and reports on climate science. Composed of scientists and science journalists, the organization conducts scientific research on climate change and energy issues, and produces multimedia content that is distributed via their website and media partners. Climate Central has been featured in many prominent U.S. news sources, including The New York Times, the Associated Press, Reuters, NBC Nightly News, Time, National Public Radio, PBS, Scientific American, and The Washington Post.
The Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE was a challenge award offered by the X PRIZE Foundation for efficient capturing of crude oil from ocean water. Inspired by the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, the award was announced on July 29, 2010, and the official one-year competition began on August 1, 2010. The first three teams were to be awarded US$1 million, US$300,000 and US$100,000 respectively.
Liquid Robotics is an American marine robotics corporation that designs, manufactures and sells the Wave Glider, a wave and solar powered unmanned surface vehicle (USV). The Wave Glider harvests energy from ocean waves for propulsion. With this energy source, Wave Gliders can spend many months at a time at sea, collecting and transmitting ocean data.
Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit operating foundation established in March 2009 by Eric Schmidt and Wendy Schmidt. The Institute's goal is to advance innovative oceanographic research and discovery through technological advancement, collaborative research, outreach and education, and open sharing of information. SOI supports oceanographic research by providing collaborators with free ship time aboard their research vessel Falkor and expert technical shipboard support. Collaborating researchers and institutions utilizing Falkor commit to openly share and communicate the outcomes of their research, including raw observations and data. Research proposals are reviewed through a peer-reviewed process and assessed based on their potential for technological innovation, oceanographic research, and overall impact. Since its inception in 2009, SOI has supported over 60 expeditions all around the globe.
Wendy Schmidt is an American businesswoman and philanthropist. She is the wife of Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, whom she met in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley.
Victoria J. Orphan is a geobiologist at the California Institute of Technology who studies the interactions between marine microorganisms and their environment. As of 2020, she is the Chair for the Center of Environmental Microbial Interactions.
Cristin Ann Dorgelo is the President Emeritus of the Association of Science and Technology Centers, where she previously served as President and CEO. She served as the Chief of Staff at the Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Barack Obama White House.
Schmidt Science Fellows is a post-doctoral fellowship launched in the Fall of 2017 with an inaugural set of recipients named in 2018. Former Google chairman Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy Schmidt fund the program and run it in partnership with the Rhodes Trust: a non-profit organization who administer the Rhodes Scholarship. The program is intended to foster interdisciplinary research and teach leadership skills in a select group of post-doctoral scientists.
Lisa Song is an American journalist and author. She won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, with David Hasemyer and Elizabeth McGowan, for their report on the Kalamazoo River oil spill. She works for ProPublica, reporting on the environment, energy and climate change.