Shostak donates $10 million to fund Project X science initiatives

A $10 million gift made by philanthropist Lynn Shostack to the University’s Project X in June will ensure continued support for faculty members seeking seed funding for creative and unconventional research projects in the field of engineering.

Established in memory of Shostack’s late husband David Gardner ’69 and overseen by the dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the fund strives to nurture innovative thought and cross-disciplinary projects while providing researchers with the freedom to take risks.

“Project X has provided the first mechanism and opportunity for funding exploratory research in SEAS on a continued and regular basis,” SEAS Vice Dean and chemical and engineering professor Pablo Debenedetti said in an email, praising the initiative as “something that very few other places can match.”

Research by faculty at the University is usually funded by external agencies. In the case of SEAS, programs such as Project X and the Transformative Technology Fund, established by Google chief executive Eric Schmidt ’76 and his wife, provide researchers with greater freedom and possibility.

Geared toward applied projects, Project X offers competitive annual grants of up to $75,000 for one or two years and currently supports seven endeavors.

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering chair Alexander Smits explained that Shostack felt that common funding sources, such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense, “reward people who are already established in their fields as experts and therefore do not encourage people from outside the discipline to get support.”

“I think it is a marvelous program,” Smits said. Three of his projects with MAE professor Szymon Suckewer, which concern blood cell damage in heart-lung machines, tattoo removal using femtosecond lasers and the killing of harmful microbes in hospitals, are supported by the initiative.

“We would not have been able to develop these ideas without the Project X funding,” he said. “All three ideas are still in the works and show promise for having future impact.”

Other projects supported by the fund have included research into water treatment alongside a sound lab capable of producing realistic three-dimensional sound using only two speakers.

Although Project X welcomes applicants from all fields of science, Smits said that it was “slanted in the engineering direction, or at least toward an activity that has a demonstrable practical intention.”

Generally, one faculty member and one graduate student or post-doctoral researcher work on each Project X venture. Unlike those for external agencies, applications to the program are brief and its beneficiaries are not bound by official guidelines for reporting how their projects proceed.

Since its inception, response to Project X has been enthusiastic, promising and continues to grow, participants and officials said.

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“The quality and thematic variety of the proposals that we have received has been outstanding,” Debenedetti said. “Dean Poor and I are very pleased with the level of faculty response to this initiative as measured by the number of proposals submitted in response to our yearly call for projects. It is very satisfying to have a mechanism in place to support exploratory research, which, by the very boldness and high-risk nature of the ideas being proposed, is difficult to fund in the initial stages through traditional funding mechanisms.”

“The vision and generosity of friends like Lynn Shostack are a big part of what makes Princeton such a special place,” Smits said. Shostack also established the University’s David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Project, overseen by the Council of Humanities, to nurture innovative projects in the humanities.

“Lynn Shostack is a visionary thinker. No other way to put it,” Smits said. “We are very lucky to have her support.”