Douglas Shooker is a philanthropist with a mind for science. The venture capitalist believes in the possibilities for what has become the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Innovation Center. That visionary outlook fueled his decision to become a founding donor to the state-of-the-art facility, located adjacent to Cedars-Sinai’s main hospital campus.

The burgeoning 30,000-square-foot innovation center contains some of Cedars-Sinai’s most high-tech laboratories and enables scientists to understand disease at its simplest level. There, they will create novel, targeted and less toxic treatments unique to each patient’s diagnosis.

Shooker’s philanthropic sense wasn’t the sole reason he made a $1 million donation to the innovation center, long before the blueprints for the labs were fully mapped out. “I donated because I could see a clear path for Cedars-Sinai to use its resources to benefit humanity,” he said. “What interested me was the hospital’s goal of analyzing large quantities of data and coupling that data with scientific study that focuses on the biology of diseases within a newly created research facility—moving Cedars-Sinai from not only being a leader in healthcare but to also becoming a leader in therapy development.”

Shooker encourages others to contribute to this important work. “I think there is a very real and remarkable opportunity to see exciting new therapies flow out of the innovation center over the next decade,” he said. “That carries a hope for better healthcare for patients everywhere. I’m grateful that I’m in a position where I can contribute to worthy causes like this. Sometimes, all it takes is a willingness to commit early to a project to bring others on board.”