Researchers at the University of California San Diego will have the opportunity to dive deeper into such questions thanks to a $15 million gift made in USD coin (USDC) by the Balvi Filantropic Fund, directed by Vitalik Buterin, founder of one of the world’s leading blockchain networks, Ethereum. The gift establishes the Meta-Institute for Airborne Disease in a Changing Climate (“The Airborne Institute”) at UC San Diego.

Buterin’s donation is one of the largest cryptocurrency gifts made to a U.S. university, and to a University of California campus. It is the largest to date to fund open-source research on aerosols. The gift was exchanged into U.S. dollars through Engiven, a locally-based provider of cryptocurrency donation services to nonprofits.