The support that made expansion possible

Frederick S. Pardee’s support helped turn a modeling effort into an enduring research institution.

His founding gift in 2006 enabled DU and the Korbel School to establish the Center. That support sustained the development of IFs and made possible the Institute’s flagship publication series, Patterns of Potential Human Progress, which used IFs to examine global challenges in poverty, education, health, infrastructure, and governance.

Learn more about Frederick S. Pardee’s support

Frederick S. Pardee’s philanthropy helped make DU the institutional home of IFs and supported the growth of the Center that became today’s Pardee Institute.

From 2011 to 2023, the Pardee Center expanded its research portfolio and deepened its partnerships with policy, academic, and development communities.

This period showed how IFs-based analysis could support different kinds of long-term questions. Pardee worked with partners on global trends, development pathways, geopolitical analysis, poverty, food security, health, infrastructure, and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Several areas of work became especially important to the Center’s growth:

Development analysis

Pardee used IFs to examine how changes in education, health, poverty, infrastructure, governance, food security, and other systems may shape development outcomes over time. Work with partners such as the Institute for Security Studies, the African Union Development Agency, the United Nations Development Programme, UN Women, Action Against Hunger, USAID, and others applied long-term analysis to country, regional, and global development questions.

Geopolitical analysis

Pardee expanded its work on international relations, political instability, national power, and influence. Projects such as the Diplometrics Project helped turn selected geopolitical relationships into documented, comparable evidence, while other collaborations examined long-term questions about conflict, strategy, and global power.

Research and policy applications

Across this period, Pardee’s work often moved between academic research and policy-facing analysis. Projects produced reports, policy briefs, datasets, peer-reviewed publications, and tools that helped partners compare assumptions, test scenarios, and examine possible long-term effects of decisions made today.

The result was not a shift away from IFs, but a broader set of applications built on the platform’s integrated structure.

In October 2023, Pardee was designated an Institute at the University of Denver, reflecting its growth as a research organization and its expanding contribution to DU’s research community. In 2026, the Pardee Institute received a Research, Scholar, and Creative Works Award in recognition of its impact.

The foundation of Pardee’s work remains IFs. The platform continues to support scenario-based analysis across connected systems, helping users examine how assumptions about development, climate, governance, economic change, and international relations may shape future pathways.

As an Institute, Pardee is positioned to continue investing in the research infrastructure behind that work: model development, data systems, documentation, training, public-facing tools, and partnerships. Continuing support from Frederick S. Pardee’s legacy, along with institutional support from the Korbel School, gives Pardee room to strengthen both the rigor and accessibility of its work.

The next phase of Pardee’s history will depend on how well the Institute can make its tools, assumptions, and analysis useful to the people who need them. That includes researchers testing new questions, students learning how to reason across systems, policymakers weighing trade-offs, and partner organizations planning for futures that remain uncertain but not unknowable.

The support that drives this work forward

Mr. Pardee’s later support helped the Center grow in practical ways as well, including space for the team and continuing endowment support. His estate gift in 2024 brought his total giving to the University of Denver to just under $25 million, creating further capacity for Pardee to invest in tools, datasets, research, and public-facing applications.

The significance of this support is not only financial. It helped create the conditions for a research institute that is not defined by a single project or partnership, but by a broader body of work: open-source modeling, scenario analysis, data development, scholarship, training, and engagement with organizations working on long-term global questions.