Mahs gift $20M to Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building and research

I am delighted to announce that two great friends of UC Irvine, UCLA Professor Emeritus Robert A. Mah and Dr. Adeline Yen Mah, through their Falling Leaves Foundation, have made an additional $20 million gift to support both the construction of the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building and the groundbreaking work that will be done in it. This gift builds upon their lead gift in 2021 that established the building and brings their total giving to UC Irvine to $53 million.

The Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building is under construction in our growing Health Sciences district, near the Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences and the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing and Health Sciences Hall, and only a mile away from the UCI Health – Irvine medical complex. It is designed to bring together faculty, medical and graduate students, and undergraduates in the medical sciences to develop new ways of understanding disease etiology and improving medical treatment. It will open next summer.

In addition to supporting the building’s construction, this new gift provides endowed research funds for two of the centers of excellence that will be housed in it. The Robert A. Mah Molecular Innovation Center will pursue next-generation therapeutic drug design. The Adeline Yen Mah Vaccine Center will advance vaccine science to safeguard vulnerable populations against future pathogens and develop new mRNA, DNA and protein immunotherapies for inherited and acquired diseases. 

The new knowledge and innovative tools and techniques that arise from the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building will ultimately make lives better in Orange County, across the nation and around the world. Please join me in expressing our sincere gratitude to Robert and Adeline Mah for their generous support.

Chancellor Howard Gillman