David Shaw is a former hedge fund manager, professor, and scientist with a net worth $7.3 billion and the founder of the quantitative hedge fund firm known as D.E Shaw. ¹ He is a philanthropist and a donor of millions of dollars to Democratic candidates and organizations such as Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and the Senate Majority PAC. ²

He is married to Beth Kobliner, a fellow Democratic political donor.

Career

Shaw is the chief scientist at D.E Shaw Research, a computational biochemistry research firm where he leads a research group comprised of multiple disciplines in the field of computational biochemistry. He is also a senior research fellow at the Center of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at Columbia University and is an Adjunct Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia’s medical school. ³

Shaw received his doctorate degree from Stanford University in 1980 and held a position as a faculty member of the Computer Science Department at Columbia University until 1986. That year he left to enter the new and emerging field of computational finance,⁴ and in 1988, he founded the D.E Shaw group. ⁵ In 2001, he commenced his work on computational biochemistry, in 2002 he began building the scientific team at D.E. Shaw Research and renewed his affiliation to Columbia in 2005. ⁶

Shaw was appointed to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology by Bill Clinton in 1994 and by Barack Obama in 2009. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, the National Academy of Engineering in 2012, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014. He won the ACM Gordon Bell Prize on two separate occasions. ⁷

Family and Philanthropic Activity

Shaw is married, lives in New York City and has 3 children. ⁸ His wife is Beth Kobliner, who is a personal finance writer, and together they created their own family foundation called the Shaw Family Endowment Fund. This private grantmaking organization has donated multiple grants to various organizations such as the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue ($400,000), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center ($400,000), the Horace Mann School ($800,000) and Organizing for Action ($1 million). Through this fund he is a regular donor to educational institutions, as he makes a yearly donation of $1 million to Princeton University, Stanford University, Harvard University and Yale University. He also donated $500,000 each to Brown University and Columbia University on a yearly basis. ⁹ Shaw donated multiple grants from his family foundation to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a member of the board of said organization. ¹⁰

Political Activity

Shaw is a very generous and consistent donor to politically left-of-center organizations and politicians, giving them millions of dollars. He donated over $4 million over the last 10 years to Priorities USA Action,¹¹ the largest Democratic super PAC that supported the campaigns of Democratic presidential nominees Joe Biden,¹² Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. ¹³ He also donated over $1 million to the Senate Majority PAC,¹⁴a Democratic Super PAC that supports the campaigns of Senate candidates. ¹⁵ He donated over $1 million to the House Majority PAC,¹⁶ a Democratic SuperPAC that supports the campaigns of Democratic candidates to be elected to the House of Representatives. ¹⁷

He also donated $106,500 to the Biden Action Fund, a super PAC that supported the campaign of Joe Biden. ¹⁸ He donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC),¹⁹ the campaign arm of the Democrats in the House Representatives that works toward fortifying and expanding the Democratic majority. ²⁰ He also donated a similar amount of money to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC),²¹a left-of-center organization whose function is to support Democratic candidates in their campaigns to be elected to the U.S Senate. ²²

Shaw has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to other Democratic politicians, such as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, U.S Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), former U.S Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY),²³ former U.S Representative Dick Gephardt (D-MO), former United States Vice President Al Gore, and former President Bill Clinton. ²⁴

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15. “Our Mission.” Senate Majority PAC. Last modified February 12, 2021. https://www.senatemajority.com/about/.
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17. “Our Story.” House Majority PAC. Accessed July 7, 2021. https://www.thehousemajoritypac.com/about-us/our-story.
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20. “About.” DCCC. Last modified January 11, 2021. https://dccc.org/about/.
21. “Browse Individual Contributions.” FEC.gov. Accessed July 7, 2021. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_name=David+E+Shaw
22. “About Us.” DSCC: Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Accessed July 7, 2021. https://www.dscc.org/about-us/.
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