Marcus Family Leads Campaign for Brain Disorders Research

Ask Paul Marcus ’81 and he’ll tell you it’s a natural transition from civil engineering to real estate development. His company, Marcus Partners, a real estate investment and development firm with offices in Boston, Connecticut and south Florida, focuses on commercial office, light industrial, biomedical and medical office properties and select residential and retail projects. Marcus Partners is known for its integrity, insight, creativity, and ability to execute complex acquisition and development projects. Paul readily admits that he honed many of these attributes at MIT. Just as his MIT training was a natural fit for his current profession, he’ll also tell you it was perfectly natural for him and his wife Anne to begin working together with the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

When their seven-month-old son was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, Anne and Paul Marcus were devastated. They wrestled with the difficult question of how to cope with the diagnosis. And, like so many other families faced with a developmental diagnosis, they were frustrated with the lack of research-driven treatments available for their son. They had to navigate their way through numerous institutions in order to develop an optimal treatment plan for him while racing against the clock, knowing time is the most critical factor in obtaining quality of life for children with brain disorders or brain damage.

What began as a personal journey also became a mission for their family’s philanthropic efforts. For Paul and Anne, the answer was to get involved and give of their time, energy and pocketbook. “We found philanthropy very therapeutic”, says Paul. The couple began with fundraising efforts for the Developmental Medicine Center at Children’s Hospital Boston, where they were instrumental in recruiting a volunteer board and leading a campaign to raise over $12 million. Paul has learned that “as individuals, we can have a massive impact by opening our checkbooks and devoting just a little bit of our time.”

Predictably, Paul’s philanthropic vision to help children with developmental disorders and their families did not end at Children’s Hospital Boston. Paul felt that more could be done, and started to look for broader solutions. He came to MIT in2003 and knocked on the door of Mriganka Sur, BCS Department Head. Paul saw the Institution as “the place where scientists and Marcus Family Leads Campaign for Brain Disorders Research Anne and Paul Marcus with their sons, Chris and Robbie engineers work together to understand a problem and then fixit.” Building on that spirit of collaboration, he wanted to help BCS faculty work with physicians and clinicians in order to think about new ways to attack brain disorders. The result was a $250,000 gift that established the Brain Development and Disorders Project. This gift and the research it inspired was the catalyst that ultimately seeded the Autism Consortium.

In 2006, Paul and Anne helped to found the Autism Consortium, a Boston based multi-institutional collaboration which funds clinical innovation and research in Autism and other brain disorders. Paul personally recruited the lay leadership for the Board of Directors. He reached out to leadership of 14 institutions, bringing MIT together with Harvard, Boston University, the Broad Institute, MGH and Children’s Hospital Boston, to build the Consortium. Paul also provided the important seed funding for the initial clinical and research projects. Bringing the message of partnering to this important area of brain research, he assembled a group of donors to invest in the enhanced clinical care and genetic diagnostic expertise at five clinical sites across Boston. He asked friends with expertise in genetics and drug discovery to help entice biotech firms to provide cutting edge technology to new transformative projects. These efforts have resulted intangible progress, improving the lives of patients and families and generating new knowledge and treatments for those with Autism Spectrum Disorders. In January 2008, The New England Journal of Medicine published the first significant results of the Autism Genome Scan, funded by the Anne and Paul Marcus Family Foundation. The new finding of a missing or duplicated piece of chromosome containing 30 genes caught the attention of the scientific community, as well as the general population.

Paul’s persistence motivated the BCS faculty to see the possibilities of intensive collaboration. This cooperation and collaboration among various researchers from different institutions enables discovery to proceed at a pace unlike anything seen before for brain disorders. Moreover, the results have encouraged other alumni to support the research and MIT has received additional gifts in support of this project. It makes sense the work takes place here at the Institute, according to Paul. “If you are interested in the brain and unlocking the mysteries of the mind, MIT is the place to come for results.”

According to Mriganka Sur, “Paul is somewhat unusual. Perhaps it is the strength of his MIT engineering training, but Paul is able to envision the roadmap. He embraces risk and finds the people and resources needed to increase the pace of change. He and Anne are committed to changing this landscape and improving the care and treatment for children and their families everywhere. ‘No’ is simply not in his vocabulary. He never asks for recognition, just results.”