The Allen Institute has landed more than $173 million in grants for a variety of brain research projects, the Seattle-based research nonprofit announced Thursday.
The funding, which comes from the National Institute of Health, will go toward research at the Allen Institute, said Luke Esposito, senior director of scientific operations at the institute. The Allen Institute is looking to hire about 22 people across various projects.
"We have staff and we have lab supplies and operating expenses in our building," Esposito said. "The money goes to the research."
The Allen Institute is receiving five grants in total. The main project centers around mapping cells in the brain, or what the Allen Institute calls "the brain equivalent of the Human Genome Project." Of the total $173 million, about $100 million is going toward that main project. Of the roughly 22 people the Allen Institute is looking to hire, 13 will work on the brain cell mapping project.
Esposito said the research will take place at the new Dexter Yard life sciences and technology campus. The Allen Institute confirmed earlier this month it was expanding into Dexter Yard, which is just blocks away from its South Lake Union headquarters.
According to a release, the projects will involve researchers from 17 other institutions in the U.S., Europe and Japan. The Allen Institute will make the findings and data public.
"We want those applications to go well beyond our building," Esposito said. "Part of our mission is to disseminate information for the community use, so we put things out there and put our findings on our website so that anybody can use them."
The Allen Institute was founded in 2003 by Paul Allen and his sister Jody Allen. The nonprofit supports bioscience and global research, and its divisions include the Allen Institute for Cell Science, the Allen Institute for Immunology, the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics, which launched in November 2021.
In December, longtime Allen Institute CEO Allan Jones stepped down and was replaced by Rui Costa, who had been the CEO of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University since 2017.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify the funding earmarked for the brain cell mapping project.
