Our mission is to empower people and accelerate scientific discovery.

The Shanahan Foundation Fellowship at the Interface of Data and Neuroscience was created to bring fresh perspectives into the field, encouraging data scientists to work together with leading neuroscientists at the Allen Institute and at the University of Washington.

The Center for STEMM Mentorship at Stanford is a pilot initiative launched in 2022 with support from the Shanahan Family Foundation that works in service of building healthy research teams and improved mentorship alliances in STEMM labs. An effective mentor-mentee relationship is a two-way street—an alliance with a collaborative spirit rooted in a vulnerability-based trust, in which both mentors and mentees are comfortable in acknowledging what they don’t know, admitting mistakes when they occur, providing honest feedback, readily asking for help, sharing failure stories, and celebrating successes. The Center’s approach uniquely focuses on the unit of the research team, serving whole teams all together and employing lessons from successful teams across diverse sectors (business, academia, and even sports!) to implement and elevate the practice of mentorship in an academic research team context.

The Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation’s Diagnostics Accelerator (DxA) is working to replace today’s expensive and invasive PET imaging and spinal fluid taps with new gold-standard methods for early, non-invasive and affordable diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and related dementias. Launched in July 2018, the DxA has mobilized commitments totaling $50 million to bring focus, resources, and urgency required to solve this important problem.

While roughly one of every two high-income students in the United States will graduate from college, only one in 10 of their low-income peers can say the same. Recognizing the role a college degree plays in breaking the cycle of poverty, Breakthrough works to change that. Breakthrough’s unique year-round 10-year model provides tutoring, enrichment, college prep, and mentoring — with 100% of their students attending college.

Founded in 2001, Peter’s Place was the first family grief support agency of its kind to serve the greater Philadelphia area. Today, it combines awareness of local community needs, professional experience, and extensive best practices research to produce a unique grieving center that is not replicated anywhere. Peter’s Place provides both onsite and offsite programs for grieving children, families, and mental health professions, such as school-based peer support groups.

Careers in computing are a means of upward mobility for students and can have positive generational effects. Well-designed academic bridge programs can help motivated students get the additional support they need to be successful in computing fields and increase the major retention rate for underrepresented minorities, first-generation college students, and women. The Access for Computing Equity (ACE++) program in the School of Engineering at Tufts University is a 12-week residential summer bridge experience for current Tufts first-year students who are interested in pursuing a major in Computer Science.