The Minerva Research Foundation is a charitable trust that was founded in 1993 to promote research in Mathematical and Statistical Sciences and to encourage the participation of women in these disciplines. The policy of the foundation is to support specific selected areas of study with the hope of making a meaningful contribution to these areas.  The plan of the foundation is to sponsor conferences and seminars on certain topics in probability and statistics and to offer grants to institutions and individuals who are conducting research in these topics.

        The Director of the Foundation is Luisa T. Fernholz. She received her Ph.D. in statistics from Rutgers University and has served on the faculties of the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, the University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton University. Dr. Fernholz is currently Professor Emerita of Statistics at Temple University.

        The Minerva Foundation has provided grants for research and conferences to the following institutions:
 
Columbia University
Dalhousie University (CA)
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (CH)
 Harvard University
Institute for Advanced Study
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Princeton University
Rutgers University
Temple University