One of the digs on RTP has often been that it's an R&D outpost for major companies based elsewhere -- some of whose philanthropic giving tends to follow in their home office, not their field stations.
Which is of course not universally true, as giving by Cisco and others has shown. And now, chalk up Biogen Idec on that list of big local givers.
The biotech company announced today that the North Carolina Biotechnology Center in RTP has been given a $1 million grant from the firm's foundation.
The grant will help to build a major addition at the site of the Center's RTP headquarters, space that will serve to a great extent to help support K-12 educational outreach programs that help incorporate biotechnology training into elementary and secondary school science curricula.
The N&O noted that PPD (with 1,400 Triangle employees) and the Duke Energy Foundation were also among the donors. Biogen Idec has about 850 staff in the Durham area.
Founded in 1984, the NC Biotechnology Center is credited with helping to bring an industry that now employs over 60,000 North Carolinians in the state, and has helped make the state one of the national leaders in biotech and life sciences.
Biogen Idec also provided $60,000 to the Contemporary Science Center for the creation of a "community learning laboratory" for high school science students.
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