$75 million donation for Stanford quest

San Francisco Chronicle 2/16/07

By Nanette Asimov

Months after Stanford University announced it would raise billions of dollars to address some of the world's most vexing problems, Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, and conservationist Akiko Yamazaki have agreed to donate $75 million to the cause.

Yang and Yamazaki, who are married, hold degrees from Stanford, where Yang is a trustee.

Most of their donation, $50 million, will help build Stanford's $118 million Environment and Energy building. The 166,000-square-foot structure is expected to become a gathering place to consider how to prevent global environmental destruction.

Yang helped create the Yahoo search engine in 1994 when he was a doctoral student at Stanford.

Yamazaki, a director of the Wildlife Conservation Network in Los Altos, said the new building and programs "will allow the best and the brightest to convene and engage in problem solving in a unique way that's only possible in an academic setting. What better place than Stanford for that?"

Another $5 million of the gift will help build the $100 million Learning and Knowledge Center for the university's medical school, a 120,000-square-foot building where doctors will learn the latest medical technologies. How Stanford will spend the remaining $20 million has yet to be decided.