The Institute is partially funded from the 1999 naming gift of $110 million, given by the W. M. Keck Foundation to the then-USC School of Medicine; the gift designated $22 million to build the new Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute facility on the Health Sciences Campus. Construction of the Institute began in the fall 2001, and it opened in January 2003. The National Institutes of Health also awarded two million dollar construction grants to the Keck School of Medicine.[2]