Massachusetts General Hospital, Ragon Institute

The Ragon Institute was established in February 2009 at MGH, MIT, and Harvard with a dual mission: to contribute to the accelerated discovery of an HIV/AIDS vaccine and to establish itself as a world leader in the collaborative study of immunology. Founded with a commitment of $100 million from Mr. and Mrs. Ragon, the institute is structured and positioned to significantly contribute to a global effort to successfully develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine by: Creating non-traditional partnerships among experts with different but complementary backgrounds; Providing a means for rapidly funding promising studies and emerging concepts in the field; Integrating key facets of current vaccine development efforts that have tended to follow separate tracks ; Providing a substantial pool of accessible, flexible funding that will help lower the threshold for scientists to pursue risky, unconventional avenues of study that are unlikely to attract funding from traditional sources.