ROCHESTER — The Mayo Clinic has received a $20 million donation from Red Wing native Dwight Dierks and his wife, Diane, to advance the use of artificial intelligence for early cancer detection and intervention.
According to Thursday's announcement, the funding will also support the Mayo Clinic Platform, a technology project at the forefront of Mayo's plan to reimagine the future of health care, which will use vast amounts of anonymized patient data to develop cutting-edge diagnostics and treatments.
To honor the donation, Mayo will appoint the Dwight and Diane Dierks president of the Mayo Clinic Platform and establish the Heidi Dierks Krauss Fund for AI Innovation for Cancer, named for Dierks' late sister, who was treated at Mayo. The AI efforts will include developing advanced generative AI to better understand an individual's risk of developing cancer and enable clinicians to intervene before cancer is diagnosed, Mayo said.
“We can't afford to wait years or decades for new AI advancements in healthcare – people need new treatments and cures now,” Dwight Dierks said in a statement. “Diane and I truly believe that the Mayo Clinic platform and AI innovations are key to better predicting diseases like cancer, enabling physicians to intervene earlier and provide more effective treatments that save, extend and improve patients' lives.”
Dwight Dilks, the son of a mailman who grew up working on his family's pig farm less than 50 miles from Mayo College in Rochester, joined chipmaker Nvidia in 1994 as its 22nd employee and is now a senior vice president. Nvidia, which makes chips that are key components that power artificial intelligence, overtook Microsoft earlier this month to become the world's most valuable company, with a market capitalization of $3.3 trillion.
The gift to Mayo follows the $34 million the Dirks gave to Milwaukee School of Engineering in 2017. The gift to MSOE, Dwight's alma mater, supported the construction of a new academic facility focused on AI and computational science education.
