U-M leaders and the Brehms celebrate the signing of the $44 million gift agreement. Clockwise from left, Vice President for Development Jerry May, Bill and Dee Brehm, Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs Robert Kelch, M.D., Kellogg Eye Center director Paul Lichter, M.D., Medical School Dean Allen S. Lichter, M.D., Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Tim Slottow, MBA, and President Mary Sue Coleman, Ph.D.

The extraordinary $44 million gift by Bill and Dee Brehm has many parts, each fitting together to form an all-out assault on Type I diabetes.

The gift's centerpiece is $30 million to design, build and equip a facility that will embody the new approach to Type I research envisioned by the Brehms.

The proposed facility will house research laboratory space, information technology infrastructure and other important components to bring U-M diabetes researchers together. And it will be designed to make it easier for doctors, scientists, computer specialists and systems analysts to combine and organize their efforts for speed. The exact location and design of the facility have not been finalized, and will require the approval of the U-M Board of Regents.

The Brehms' gift will also make possible the Brehm Type I Diabetes Research Center, which will focus the University's research efforts in fighting a disease that affects more than 1.3 million Americans. (Learn more about Type I diabetes here) The center's research will get off the ground thanks to a $1.5 million endowment from the Brehms.

The gift also includes $2 million to help fund a Comprehensive Diabetes Center within the U-M Medical School, which will act as an umbrella to bring together everyone working on all forms of diabetes and its complications.

The Brehms have also endowed two Medical School professorships in diabetes, with $2 million in funding for each chair. One of these chairs, the William K. and Delores S. Brehm Professorship in Type I Diabetes Research, has been filled by Peter Arvan, M.D., Ph.D., the chief of the Metabolism Endocrinology & Diabetes Division within the Department of Internal Medicine. The other chair, to be called the Brehm-Soderquist Professorship, is intended for the new faculty member who will be recruited to U-M to head the Brehm Center.

Another $5.8 million from the Brehms will enable U-M to recruit, and help establish the laboratories of, six exceptional young researchers. These “Brehm Scholars” as they will be called, will be the cream of the crop of junior scientists involved in research related to Type I diabetes. They will be hired at the rate of two each year beginning in 2005, and will receive funding to help start their research at U-M and additional funding to continue it.

The final $700,000 of the Brehm gift will establish a scholarship fund for graduates of Fordson High School in Dearborn, Mich. — Bill Brehm's alma mater. These scholarships will help top Fordson graduates with high academic achievement, outstanding leadership and community-interest skills attend the University of Michigan.

In early 2005, a gathering of diabetes experts and others from many areas of the University and around the country will be invited to come together for a multi-day session called a “charrette.” This pooling of ideas and goals will lead to a comprehensive vision for what the new centers, facility and research initiative will aim to achieve, and ways in which they can achieve it.