On Oct. 17, 2016, the University of Oregon (UO) announced an electrifying shift in the future of the University of Oregon and the state, UO President Michael H. Schill on Tuesday pulled back the curtain on a transformational gift of $500 million from longtime supporters Penny and Phil Knight.

The gift will launch a $1 billion initiative creating the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. The one-of-a-kind center will be dedicated to the translation of laboratory discoveries into tangible innovations that improve lives and advance society.

To be known as the Knight Campus, the initiative will be one of the first public university initiatives to bring researchers together with entrepreneurial specialists for the primary purpose of finding new and transformative ways of turning research into everyday products, technologies and services to aid society at large. The campus will reshape how research is done and build on the UO’s pathbreaking reputation for interdisciplinary science.

The gift marks the largest donation ever to a single public flagship university. Other gifts of similar size have gone to medical schools, private universities or multi-university partnerships. It is the largest gift ever to any of Oregon’s seven public universities and matches a gift to the semi-public Oregon Health & Science University, also from Penny and Phil Knight.

Unlike the OHSU gift, the Knight Campus gift is not a challenge and does not require any match. But the UO will seek additional donations and state support to double funding for the campus, with some of the money going to construction and hiring and some to an endowment to fund operation of the campus long into the future.