Phillip Terrence Ragon

Phillip T. (Terry) Ragon is an MIT trained physicist who has served the needs of IT professionals for more than thirty years. Since founding InterSystems Corporation in 1978, he has led the company to worldwide prominence in the database, integration, and healthcare application markets. He serves as a consultant to numerous academic and governmental institutions, but has done much more by parlaying his success in business to support unique models of research aimed toward solving major global health challenges.

He recently donated $100 million dollars to establish the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, whose mission is to contribute to the generation of an effective HIV vaccine. His goal here is visionary. Twenty-five years of efforts to create an effective HIV vaccine have failed, and Ragon recognized the need for a coordinated. collaborative multi-disciplinary effort bringing together physical, life, and engineering scientists with clinicians to pursue unconventional approaches, making full use of the entire scientific toolbox. There are no standard funding mechanisms to support this research paradigm, but through his gift he has enabled a new model of collaborative, transformative work aimed at overcoming one of the planet’s major global health challenges.