The Science Philanthropy Alliance announced that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has joined as an associate member.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was launched in December 2015 by Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician and founder and CEO of The Primary School in East Palo Alto. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is a new kind of philanthropic organization dedicated to advancing human potential and promoting equal opportunity through engineering, grant making, impact investing, policy, and advocacy work. Initial areas of focus include science and education.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s work in science will support collaborations between scientists and engineers, create computational and experimental tools to empower the scientific community, and build a movement to support basic scientific research. Its mission is to support the science and technology that will help make it possible to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century.

“We were pleased to support the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s founders and staff as they established a program that supports basic biomedical research, and we are excited that they have joined our community,” said Marc Kastner, president of the Alliance. “Adding members, like the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, to our Alliance is critical to achieving our mission of increasing philanthropic support for basic research.”