Salt Lake City-based Huntsman Mental Health Foundation received a $35 million gift from Gail Miller and the Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Foundation to support a new translational research building at Huntsman Mental Health Institute at the University of Utah.
The foundation said Nov. 9 that the gift will help finish the 185,000-square-foot building in the university’s Research Park, outfit its labs, imaging and technology, and help the institute recruit and retain physician-scientists. The facility is slated to open in fall 2027.
If the University of Utah Board of Trustees approves, the building will carry the name Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Translational Research Building.
Research teams will be organized into hubs around shared problems, with wet labs and computational dry labs sharing floors. The building will house a 7-tesla MRI, more than twice as powerful as a standard hospital MRI, and the Utah site of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, which tracks nearly 12,000 young people into adulthood. Focus areas include suicide prevention, addiction, youth mental health, psychosis and bipolar disorder, and maternal mental health.
Bob Carter, MD, PhD, executive vice president for health sciences at the University of Utah and CEO of University of Utah Health, said putting scientists and clinicians in one facility “means promising discoveries can reach patients sooner.” Ms. Miller, co-founder of the Larry H. Miller Co., said the building’s value lies in uniting research with clinical care.
The Miller gift follows the Huntsman family’s $150 million gift that founded the institute in 2019 and a $90 million appropriation from the Utah Legislature for the building in 2021. Construction began in October 2023.
Huntsman Mental Health Foundation President Miranda Barnard said fewer than 2% of U.S. charitable dollars go to mental health causes.
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