The Director’s Innovation Fund was initiated in 2019 by Scott Fisher, an Illinois alumnus. He wanted to honor his late wife Bonita J. Fisher, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis—a neurological disease that affects millions of people, but has no known cures.

Denise Poulos Elser has always believed in using multidisciplinary collaborations to solve important problems. In 2017, she attended an event hosted by Steven Thayer, a Leadership Council member at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, where she first learned about the IGB and was intrigued by the social and ethical implications of advances in genomic sciences. During her subsequent visit in 2019, she was impressed by the different IGB themes and was inspired to help the research endeavors by making a generous contribution to the Director’s Innovation Fund.