Marco Londei & Liqun Wang: Seeding a better tomorrow
For Scripps Research supporters Marco Londei and Liqun Wang, science is something they care about deeply. With backgrounds in science and medicine, they recognize the importance of fostering environments where curiosity is encouraged. It’s one of the many reasons they look forward to engaging with Scripps Research scientists and trainees—the institute’s spirit of bold exploration coupled with a rich tradition of high-quality science.
With their first gift to the institute, Liqun and Marco generously supported travel awards for graduate and postdoctoral trainees. The endowed fund for these awards was first established with a seeding contribution from Scripps Research professor Donna Blackmond. These awards provide pivotal funding for graduate and postdoctoral trainees to attend conferences or professional development workshops.
“When we gave toward the travel awards, we recalled ourselves in our early research period,” Liqun says. “How did we learn? By being at meetings, mingling and being able to discuss with leaders in the field. Those experiences are so beneficial and eye-opening.”
Liqun is the founder and CEO of QSC Partners, a company that facilitates cross-country partnerships and investments. Throughout her multifaceted career, she’s worked across healthcare and finance, holding senior positions at Novartis, BSI Bank and GlaxoSmithkline. Marco earned his medical degree from the University of Bologna and, after years in academia, entered a career in the pharmaceutical industry. A specialist in gastroenterology and immunology, he has held leadership roles at many organizations, including Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squibb. While at Novartis, an innovative medicines company on the Torrey Pines Mesa, Liqun and Marco worked alongside Pete Schultz, prior to his tenure as the current President and CEO of Scripps Research.
With their extensive experience in San Diego’s biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, Liqun and Marco have long been familiar with Scripps Research’s name. The institute’s scientists have pioneered countless breakthroughs and scientific advances, which have laid the foundation for several biotech start-up companies as well as sparked partnerships with pharmaceutical companies. Scripps Research’s innovative spirit and world-class expertise have become well-known across San Diego and the broader biotech landscape.
Inspired by the institute’s trajectory of growth under President Schultz’s leadership, Liqun and Marco made their first gift in 2021. Since then, they’ve enjoyed engaging more with the community of trainees and scientists at Scripps Research, and they especially value the chance to learn about those their support has directly impacted.
“We appreciate the personal interaction, the human touch,” Marco says. “We’ve all been involved in institutions, and we understand that you need financing to make things happen, but we love to see the actual impact. For instance, with the travel awards, we know who they were and which conferences they were able to attend. This is what is happening with the funding.”
In 2024, Liqun and Marco furthered their investment in Scripps Research by creating the Farfy Foundation Graduate Fellowship Award in the Skaggs Graduate School of Chemical and Biological Sciences. This award will help support one graduate student’s studies annually for five years. Through their support of scientific education, Liqun and Marco hope to encourage more talented students to pursue science by removing some of the typical financial barriers.
Liqun’s own educational journey was marked by the transformative power of a philanthropy-funded fellowship. She was looking to pursue her PhD outside her home country of China. While some scholarships existed for visiting faculty scholars or undergraduate students, at that time, there wasn’t financial assistance available for students seeking their PhD abroad. Philanthropy stepped in to fill this gap. Funding from a private business owner in Hong Kong enabled her to pursue her graduate studies in the United Kingdom and helped her gain access to a new world of possibilities.
Liqun and Marco named their foundation, the Farfy Foundation, with this idea in mind. “Farfy is shortened from the Italian word farfalla, meaning butterfly,” Liqun says. “A butterfly goes through a transformation, becoming a beautiful creature. And we liked the concept that, through our little contributions, hopefully, we can make a transformational impact on someone.”
Liqun and Marco encourage people looking to give to organizations to think big. How could you seed transformation in the long term? What ripple effects might your support create?
“For instance, you have a student who, through a scholarship, goes to college as the first one in their family to do so,” Marco says. “Suddenly, that changes the world around them. It changes that person, that family, potentially that community around the family. What people think is possible for themselves shifts. You don’t know where the next generation of Nobel Prize winners will come from. We can’t close the pool of who can access these opportunities. It’s better to open the pool—the more opportunities, the better.”
Liqun and Marco point to Scripps Research founder Ellen Browning Scripps as a prime example of investing in a better tomorrow. While Ellen may not have known the long-term effects of her giving, her contributions to her local community of La Jolla seeded transformative scientific and medical advances that now impact the world. As philanthropists, Liqun and Marco believe that more is always possible and that the science happening at Scripps Research holds immense potential for advances that will benefit society.
“When you create space for people who are exploratory and smart, they will do something to transform the world,” Liqun says. “It’s why we love the image of the butterfly. Something beautiful can come from this transformation.”
