Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation explained

Key People:	Harvey V. Fineberg, President
Budget:	$365 million (annual, 2021)^[1]
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Founder:	Gordon E. Moore and Betty I. Moore
Location:	Palo Alto, California, United States
Focus:	Environmental conservation Patient Care Science San Francisco Bay Area
Method:	Grants
Endowment:	$9.5 billion (2021)^[2]

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is an American foundation established by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore and his wife Betty I. Moore in September 2000^[3] to support scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements and preservation of the character of the San Francisco Bay Area.

As outlined in the Statement of Founder's Intent,^[4] the foundation's aim is to tackle large, important issues at a scale where it can achieve significant and measurable impacts.

According to the OECD, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation provided USD 60 million for development in 2020 by means of grants.^[5]

Funded projects

Astronomy

• All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN)
• Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)
• Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA)
• South Pole Telescope (SPT)
• Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT)
• W. M. Keck Observatory^[6]
• BICEP and Keck Array

Biology

• Advanced Imaging Center (AIC) | Janelia Research Campus
• Center for Ocean Solutions^[7]
• Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis
• Foldscope
• Global Ocean Sampling Expedition
• iNaturalist

Quantum materials

• Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative^[8]

Data-driven discovery

• Jupyter^[9]
• Julia (programming language)^[10]
• Data Carpentry^[11]
• NumPy Python Package
• Numba Python Package
• Dask Python Package
• R Consortium in support of R programming language projects

Moore-Sloan Data Science Environments

Source:^[12]

• Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS)^[13]
• NYU Center for Data Science^[14]
• UW eScience Institute^[15]

Marine Microbiology Initiative (initiative ending in 2021)

Source:^[16]

• Investigator awards for high-risk microbial ecology research (2012)^[17]

Other (standalone) projects

• ASAPBio^[18]
• Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing | UC Davis
• PLOS (Public Library of Science)
• Wikidata

Controversies

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has contributed US$200 million towards construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope.^[19] A proposed extremely large telescope (ELT), the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is considered controversial due to its planned location on Mauna Kea, which is considered sacred land according to the native Hawaiians, on the island of Hawaii in the United States. Native Hawaiian cultural practice and religious rights are the main points of opposition towards the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope,^[20] along with concerns over the lack of meaningful dialogue during the permitting process.^[21]

On October 7, 2014, protesters demonstrated outside the headquarters of the foundation in Palo Alto, California.^{[22] [23]} On July 14, 2019, protesters had created an online petition titled "The Immediate Halt to the Construction of the TMT Telescope" that was posted on Change.org and directed towards the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation as well as other financial backers. The online petition gathered over 278,057 signatures worldwide.^[24]

See also

• List of wealthiest charitable foundations

Notes and References

1. Web site: Moore Foundation: Financial Information.
2. Web site: Moore Foundation: Financial Information.
3. http://www.moore.org/financials.aspx About Us: Financial Information
4. Web site: Statement of Founders' Intent.
5. Web site: Home.
6. Web site: W. M. Keck Observatory . 2016-06-26 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160815193126/http://www.keckobservatory.org/mobile/single/keck_observatory_completes_4_million_adaptive_optics_fund . 2016-08-15 . dead .
7. Web site: Home - Center for Ocean Solutions. oceansolutions.stanford.edu.
8. Web site: Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative.
9. News: $6M for UC Berkeley and Cal Poly to expand and enhance open-source software for scientific computing and data science. 13 August 2015.
10. Web site: Bringing Julia from beta to 1.0 to support data-intensive, scientific computing. www.moore.org. 17 June 2016.
11. Web site: Data Carpentry. Data Carpentry.
12. Web site: Moore-Sloan Data Science Environments. MSDSE.
13. Web site: Berkeley Institute for Data Science. Berkeley Institute for Data Science.
14. Web site: Center for Data Science - New York University. NYU Center for Data Science.
15. Web site: Home. Bill. Howe. eScience Institute.
16. Web site: Initiative Strategy Detail. 2021-05-29. www.moore.org. en.
17. Web site: Moore Foundation funds 16 top scientists for high-risk marine microbial ecology research. 2021-05-29. EurekAlert!. en.
18. Web site: ASAPbio – Accelerating Science and Publication in Biology. ASAPbio.
19. Web site: Perry. Jill. Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Commits $200 Million Support for Thirty-Meter Telescope. Caltech. 5 December 2007. Caltech. 30 April 2015.
20. Web site: Dominique Saks . Indigenous religious traditions: Mauna Kea . Colorado College . 2011-11-19 . 2015-04-04.
21. Web site: Chad Blair . OHA trustee calls for moratorium on Mauna Kea telescope . Honolulu Civil Beat and KITV4 News . 2015-04-04 . 2015-04-04.
22. News: Mai. E. Komo. VIDEO: Full Coverage of Thirty Meter Telescope Disruption. 23 April 2015. Big Island Video News. Big Island Video News. October 9, 2014.
23. News: Cooper. Jeanne. Peaceful protest in Palo Alto against massive Mauna Kea telescope. 23 April 2015. SFGATE. SFGATE. October 7, 2014.
24. News: Online petition demanding halt to Thirty Meter Telescope project collects 100K signatures. Wu. Nina. July 18, 2019. Honolulu Star-Advertiser. 12 December 2019.