The W. M. Keck Foundation is an American charitable foundation supporting scientific, engineering, and medical research in the United States. It was founded in 1954 by William Myron Keck, founder and president of Superior Oil Company (now part of ExxonMobil). The Foundation's trust fund currently has assets in excess of 1 billion U.S. Dollars.
From its founding until his death in 1964, the Foundation was led by William Myron Keck. From 1964 to 1995, it was led by W. M. Keck's son, Howard B. Keck. Robert Addison Day, W. M. Keck's grandson has been chairman and president since 1996.
The Foundation provides grants in five broad areas: science and engineering research, undergraduate science and engineering, medical research, liberal arts, in Southern California. Some of the more notable projects that have received funding from the Keck Foundation include:
The Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies of Claremont McKenna College
The W.M. Keck Science Department of Claremont McKenna College, Pitzer College, and Scripps College.
The W.M. Keck Center for Interdisciplinary Bioscience Training at Rice University in Houston, Texas (training arm of the Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC))
Support for building of the W.M. Keck Observatory at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington
Construction of the W. M. Keck Observatory at Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii
Keck Institute for Space Studies, established in 2008, a joint institute of the California Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Expansion of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California
The W.M. Keck Building Center for fMRI & the W.M. Keck Foundation Center for Ocean-Atmosphere Research at the University of California, San Diego
Creation of the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences in Claremont, California
Sponsor of the Keck Computer Science Lab at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California
The W.M. Keck Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at University of California, Irvine
The WM Keck Center for 3D Innovation at University of Texas at El Paso
The William M. Keck Building at the California Institute of Technology
The Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington D.C..
The Keck Science Center at Pepperdine University.
The Keck Array
W.M.Keck Earth Science and Metal Engineering Museum at the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, whose renovation the foundation funded, at the University of Nevada, Reno
The Keck Foundation has been a long-time supporter of public television in Southern California, including underwriting the broadcast of Sesame Street on KCET since the 1970s.
The foundation has a maximum grant of 5m, though funding is typically 2m or less.
The W. M. Keck foundation has these requirements for funding:
Research that is high impact and that questions or challenges the prevailing paradigm
Research projects that no one else is pursuing
A new research project that is in its early stages
Basic research, not translational or clinical research
Research that would result in general information and new methodologies that can be of benefit to the field, even if the project were to go awry
Research projects that are not funded by any other foundation, and research projects that could not move along without Keck funding
Though this is not a requirement, the W.M. Keck Foundation prefers projects that involve some kind of collaboration over single investigator research
