Foxconn pledges $100 million matching gift to UW-Madison to establish new research enterprise

Karen Herzog , Rick Romell | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Show Caption Hide Caption UW receives $100 million gift from Foxconn Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou and UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank announced $100 million gift to the University of Wisconsin-Madison by Foxconn.

MADISON - Foxconn Technology Group on Monday pledged up to $100 million to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, including funding to help establish a new interdisciplinary research facility for the College of Engineering that will collaborate with the company's planned manufacturing complex in southeast Wisconsin.

Foxconn Chairman and founder Terry Gou was on campus to make the announcement at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery alongside UW Chancellor Rebecca Blank and several campus deans from colleges that stand to benefit.

To receive the full $100 million from Foxconn, UW must raise another $100 million in private gifts over the next two years as part of a broader, $3.2 billion fundraising campaign dubbed All Ways Forward.

The subcampaign to match Foxconn's gift will focus on supporting research that advances engineering, data and computer science, and human health. A matching gift is intended to provide an incentive for others to step up, according to university officials.

"Foxconn would not be obligated to complete the $100 million gift, unless UW raises an equivalent amount by the end of the campaign in those broad areas," UW spokesman John Lucas confirmed later Monday.

Earlier, Blank described Foxconn's pledge as the largest investment from a research partner in the university's history and among the largest gifts UW has ever received. It will include money to fast-track a new engineering building that has been only on the long-range drawing board until now.

"We're two very different institutions," Blank said. "But we share a deep commitment to pushing the boundaries of knowledge."

Foxconn stands to receive some $4 billion in public subsidies in exchange for building a planned $10 billion liquid crystal display panel factory in Mount Pleasant in Racine County and creating 13,000 Wisconsin jobs.

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Speaking with reporters after Monday's announcement, Blank said she is excited about Foxconn's pledge to the UW.

"You don't get a $100 million gift very often," she said. "...The generosity of Chairman Gou and Foxconn is just great."

Louis Woo, special assistant to Gou, said Foxconn views the gift and the collaboration with the university "as a long-term commitment to the state of Wisconsin."

Besides the manufacturing campus now under construction, Foxconn has purchased a seven-story office building in downtown Milwaukee for a regional headquarters and has said it will open "innovation centers" there and in Green Bay and Eau Claire.

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In addition to helping pay for a new interdisciplinary facility for the College of Engineering — the bulk of Foxconn's contribution will go for that purpose — the company and university will establish the Foxconn Institute for Research in Science and Technology.

The institute will have its main location in Mount Pleasant at what Foxconn has dubbed the Wisconn Valley Science & Technology Park, and will have an off-campus presence in Madison. It will provide an environment for research and development initiatives in such fields as medical science, materials science, and computer and data-driven science, the university and Foxconn said in a statement.

The partnership between the company and university also will focus on research in health-related areas such as genomics, immune cell research, clinical data integrity and processing and medical imaging in cancer and related diseases, the statement said.

Gou has a personal interest in cancer research. He lost his first wife and younger brother to the disease.

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The agreements Blank and Gou signed Monday formalize UW’s commitment to being part of research efforts at FIRST, and Foxconn’s commitment to research, recruiting, internships and hands-on work in campus labs, according to Blank.

For students, she said, the partnership promises “an even richer set of opportunities for people to work in labs, to have some really cool equipment that they can learn things on, to do training in the projects that are joint between the University of Wisconsin and Foxconn, and in turn create a whole set of job opportunities for them when they leave this campus.”

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“At Foxconn," Gou said in a statement, "we see our role as not only being a major investor in Wisconsin, but also a long-term partner to the local community. This includes promoting a vibrant environment that nurtures and enables Wisconsin’s talented workforce, allowing them to tap the immense opportunities that Wisconn Valley has to offer.”

Gou said FIRST will provide funding on practical topics in core areas that will become increasingly valuable to the advanced technology hub, along with the artificial intelligence, 8K resolution and 5G wireless technology ecosystem that the company is building in Wisconsin.

The manufacturing complex Foxconn is building in Mount Pleasant will be fed by research conducted at UW, Woo said.

"All the ideation will be coming out of here," he said. "So there will be a lot of collaboration."

Blank said UW and Foxconn will share ownership of intellectual property resulting from joint research.

“We have an agreement about exactly how we’re going to work on this," she said. "This will differ a little bit by different types of projects, but the understanding is that we will both have some ownership of the intellectual property.”

Blank and Gou signed what Blank described as "basically statements of intent, declarations of an intent to partnership." Legal contracts will come later and will require approval of the UW System Board of Regents, she said.

The agreements signed Monday describe the planned cooperation and partnership between Foxconn and UW, and are public documents — though they were still being processed late in the afternoon and were not yet available, said Lucas, the university spokesman.

The gift agreement is separate. It is between Foxconn and the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association, and "is not public because the university doesn't hold it," Lucas said. He described the foundation as the university's fund raising arm — an affiliate of UW but "not part of the university state entity."

Lucas could not say what Foxconn's gift commitment would be should the university fall short of raising $100 million.

"I don’t have additional details to share in terms of how the match is structured in this case, other than to say this is fairly common," he said. "It's an arrangement that we’ve used frequently in the last couple of years, especially with large gifts.”

A recent example, Lucas said, was the $50 million matching gift pledged by the late Milwaukee money manager Albert "Ab" Nicholas and his college sweetheart wife Nancy. Announced in June 2015, the pledge by the UW alumni couple was matched by late 2016, creating a $100 million endowment for scholarships.

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