On Mar. 3, 2016, the University of Oregon (UO) announced receipt of a $10 million gift from Tim Boyle Columbia Sportswear CEO and his wife Mary that endowed funding for the UO’s aquatic animal care facility, funded the acquisition of state-of-the art instruments and expanded facilities dedicated to genomics research.

Boyle earned his journalism degree at the University of Oregon in 1971, and his aunt, Hildegard Lamfrom, who had been a member of Nobel Prize-winning teams directed by Linus Pauling at California Institute of Technology, and James Watson and Francis Crick at the University of Cambridge, conducted research at the UO.

The Boyles’ gift also supported immediate investments in a new generation of high-powered microscopes and DNA-sequencing technologies, which accelarated research progress and provided the tools that help retain top scientists and attract new faculty.