Brin Family Donates $8.16M to UMD to Fuel Disease Research, Performing Arts and Climate Science

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The University of Maryland today announced an $8.16 million gift supporting three priorities: improving weather forecasts, expanding the frontiers of live performance and fighting Parkinson's disease.

The gift from the Brin family honors the late Eugenia Brin, wife of mathematics Professor Emeritus Michael Brin and mother of Google co-founder Sergey Brin '93 and Samuel Brin '09. It supports Forward: The University of Maryland Campaign for the Fearless, UMD's $2.5 billion campaign to expand access to first-rate education, spur transformative research and create stronger communities.

"The Brin family's partnership with the University of Maryland has helped shape our university through investments in exceptional people and bold ideas,” said UMD President Darryll J. Pines. “This latest commitment, honoring Eugenia Brin's legacy, builds on that relationship by investing in outstanding faculty, pioneering research in weather, climate and Parkinson's disease, and bold artistic innovation. We are deeply grateful for the Brin family's continued confidence in Maryland and the lasting opportunities this gift will create for our students, faculty and the communities we serve."

Collectively, the family’s long record of philanthropic support of the university totals some $65 million.

Eugenia Brin, with her young family, emigrated to Maryland in 1979 and soon found a job at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center researching topics related to climate and meteorology. In 1998, at age 50, she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, the world's fastest-growing neurological disease. She went on to become a leading advocate of research into the neurodegenerative disorder, which destroys the brain’s dopamine-producing neurons and impairs motor control. She died in December 2024.

“We’re glad to be in a position to support the University of Maryland with this gift in memory of my wife,” said Michael Brin. “It is shaped by the story of her life, from her career as a NASA climate scientist, to her lifelong love for the arts, to her battle against a terrible, but we believe, ultimately conquerable disease.”

The $8.16 million gift will be used to create:

• The Eugenia Brin Endowed Chair of Parkinson's Disease at the University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing, supporting a new faculty member who will conduct Parkinson's research in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. The position is designed to bring together faculty from both campuses to focus on computational approaches to accelerate research into the disease and deliver practical breakthroughs for patients. The funding for the endowed chair will be matched by a $1.625 million award from the Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative Fund (MEIF), a state program created to spur basic and applied research in scientific and technical fields at colleges and universities.
• The Eugenia Brin Endowed Chair in Data Assimilation, supporting a new faculty member in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology whose research in data assimilation—the discipline of feeding real-world observations into predictive models—leads to more accurate weather forecasting and climate research. Like the Parkinson’s research chair, the position will be augmented by a $1.625 million MEIF award.
• The Eugenia Brin Endowed Lectureship in Meteorology and Data Assimilation, which will fund an ongoing lecture and symposia series through UMD’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center.
• The Eugenia Brin Expansive Theatre Endowed Program Support Fund and an associated current-use fund, which will support the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies. The funding will also bring visiting artists to campus, upgrade production technology and support the Production Lab inside The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. The College of Arts and Humanities will rename the lab in Eugenia Brin's honor.