USC Energy Research Center Given $7 Million Donation

Research at USC on energy and the environmental impact of hydrocarbon fuels has received a big boost with a $7-million gift from Katherine Bogdanovich Loker, a USC alumna whose father founded the StarKist tuna company.

USC officials are scheduled to announce today that the donation will be used to build a new wing onto what is already called the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute on the campus. Loker and her late husband, Donald, previously gave $3 million to the institute and large sums to other educational and cultural projects, including $1 million to endow a chair in English at Harvard, his alma mater.

The hydrocarbon institute, founded in 1977, is researching, among other things, methods for making existing energy supplies last longer. “Considering mankind’s stake in issues like global warming, air pollution, the ozone layer and the decline in fossil fuel reserves, there can be few areas of research with a bigger payoff for society,” John Aklonis, the institute’s executive director, said in a prepared statement.

The Loker gift puts the current USC fund drive over the $600-million mark, officials said. The five-year campaign is ending on June 30 and originally sought $557 million.

A resident of Oceanside, Loker is expected to participate today in a campus ceremony thanking her for the donation. She is a 1940 graduate of USC and has described the school as “a second home to me for more than half a century.” Her husband, who was a film actor in the 1930s and later a StarKist executive and a private investor, died in 1988.