Dmitry Itskov, a Russian entrepreneur, wants the world’s billionaires to fund a project called the 2045 Initiative to find the key to immortality, IEEE Spectrum notes.

Itskov expects the first fruits in about a dozen years, when a human brain is to be transplanted into a robot body. The resulting “avatar,” as he calls it, will “save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged.”

The billionaires he’s canvassing on Forbes magazine’s annual list have an average age of around 66 years.

The project would ultimately involve downloading the brain’s contents into a computer. That and other tweaks to the technology will take a few decades, Itskov says.

Itskov doesn’t cite supporting scientific evidence. — Ed.