Retiring DowDuPont chief hands over $13.5m to build UQ sustainable future centre

One of Australia's most senior international business leaders has donated $13.5 million to help build a Brisbane university research facility to develop budding leaders of a sustainable global future.

Andrew Liveris will retire as chairman of DowDuPont in July and said he and his wife Paula wanted to invest in the future by funding a centre at the University of Queensland (UQ), to be called the Liveris Academy.

Mr Liveris, a UQ chemical engineering graduate, is in Brisbane today to announce the gift at a formal ceremony.

He said the centre would aim to attract, support and develop some of the world's "smartest young people and finest minds in engineering and science while addressing major challenges facing society today".

"We're sharing this one environment and we'd better get into the solutions space for clean air, clean water, affordable food, housing, medicines for the hundreds and hundreds of millions of people that are in poverty that are dying as we speak from hunger," he said. Read more

Kathy McLeish - ABC News - 6 April 2018