Irvine : Allergan to Help Endow Medical Chair at UCI

UC Irvine announced Wednesday that its College of Medicine has received contributions and challenge-pledges from Allergan Inc. of Irvine totaling $500,000, and that the money will be used to create an endowed chair in the opthalmology department.

Endowed chairs are funding mechanisms that allow universities to provide extra money to distinguished scholars for research and teaching.

The new endowed position, to be called the Irving Leopold Chair in Opthalmology, will go to whomever is selected as the department’s new chairperson. A UCI committee is searching for a prominent scholar in the field to head the department.

It is the sixth endowed chair to be established at UC Irvine. The new chair is named in honor of Dr. Irving H. Leopold, an international authority on the treatment of glaucoma and other eye disorders, who was chairman of the department from 1975 until his retirement in 1984.

The university said it hopes ultimately to raise more than $1 million for the Leopold Chair endowment. More donations are being solicited, said Dr. Gerald Weinstein of the College of Medicine. “We feel certain that other companies and individuals will follow Allergan’s lead in committing to the advancement of medical research in this field,” Weinstein added.