A landmark £80 million donation from the Reuben Foundation will transform Oxford’s newest college and establish a major new scholarship programme for graduate and undergraduate students. The college, which is currently known as Parks College for its location near University Parks, is set to be renamed Reuben College in recognition of this historic gift.
The University established the college – its first for three decades – last year. Located in a suite of buildings on the historic Radcliffe Science Library site, it will serve as a new base for graduate students who are eager to embrace opportunities for interdisciplinary exchange and apply their research to address key future challenges.
Reuben College aims to generate new insights into the biggest questions of our time by bringing academics from traditionally different disciplines together to work on challenging themes and share their knowledge with graduate students. A culture of innovation and enterprise and a strong commitment to diversity, sustainability and public engagement will cut across all interdisciplinary activities.
The college’s initial research themes are: artificial intelligence and machine learning; environmental change; and cellular life, which includes ongoing work in understanding COVID-19 and the current pandemic.
Professor Louise Richardson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, says: ‘Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of the Reuben family, Reuben College will join the storied ranks of Oxford colleges. For generations to come, the lives of young people will be transformed as they learn to engage in research that pushes at the frontiers of knowledge.
‘Now, more than ever, our society needs a new generation of highly educated researchers to address the global challenges that transcend national borders. This gift represents a vote of confidence in Oxford, a vote of confidence in the power of research to solve societal problems, and above all, a vote of confidence in the future.’
The gift is also a landmark one for the Reuben Foundation, which has recently made significant donations of healthcare equipment to Oxford University Hospitals (as well as other hospitals in the UK and elsewhere) treating patients with COVID-19.
As well as providing a substantial endowment for the college, the gift expands the existing Reuben Scholarship Programme, which was established in 2012 for disadvantaged undergraduate students, and creates new graduate scholarships for students at Reuben College. The Oxford-Reuben Graduate Scholarships will help attract the world’s most talented graduate students to the University.
The Reuben family says: ‘The current pandemic has shown us just how vital it is to have access to the very best medical research and academic thinking. We hope that this endowment for the Reuben College will help keep Oxford University at the global forefront of research in the vital areas of environmental change, AI and machine learning and cellular life, thereby helping to improve the lives of millions of people long into the future.’
Reuben College will begin recruiting its first cohort of graduate students this September, ready for admission in the autumn of 2021.