About

The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Center for Biomedical, Physical and Engineering Sciences promotes the convergence of the life, physical and engineering sciences to foster the innovations necessary for meeting the health care challenges of the future.

The Center was established with generous support from the late Raymond and Beverly Sackler. The University of California, Berkeley is well aware of the controversy around some members of the Sackler family and their company Purdue Pharma, which developed and aggressively marketed the pain medication OxyContin. We acknowledge that the firm and its management have been implicated in the opioid crisis in the United States, and that many individuals have been unfortunately and grievously harmed by their actions.

At this time, UC Berkeley has chosen not to accept additional philanthropic gifts from the Sackler family or related entities. Berkeley is dedicated to using the endowments already created in accordance with the terms of gift to advance our mission, namely to teach, to create new knowledge, and to serve the common good. Since its inception in Spring 2012, the Sackler Center has advanced research that takes advantage of the rapid innovation at the intersection of the life, physical, and engineering sciences.

We are proud of the scientific achievements and their benefits to society that the Center has enabled. It supports two endowed chairs at UC Berkeley and promotes innovation and faculty collaboration between UC Berkeley and UCSF by facilitating a sabbatical exchange program.