In March, 1998, Dr. Louis Schatz pledged $5.6 million from his estate to endow The Schatz Center for Tree Molecular Genetics in the School of Forest Resources at Pennsylvania State University. Through endowments for a Professorship in tree genetics, a post-doctoral fellowship, visiting scholar support, undergraduate awards, colloquia, and library collections, the Schatz Center will provide funding for research and education in forest genetics and related technologies at the University Park and Mont Alto campuses of Pennsylvania State University. The Schatz Center endowments will also support construction of a new Forest Resources building on the University Park campus.

The Schatz Center’s high throughput facility has the capacity to sequence over 100,000 DNA clones per year, i.e. over 70 million bases of new DNA sequence. The Schatz Center can also genotype over 100,0000 samples per year. The Schatz Center is strategically located in the Wartik Lab at PSU where the Biotechnology Institute’s Shared Technology Facilities for DNA Micro-arrays, Nucleic Acids, and Hybridoma services are also located. To learn about projects underway in the Schatz Center, please refer to the Schatz Center Projects page.