About Us

Ed Penhoet is a member of the board of trustees. He was the Foundation's president from 2004 - 2007, and prior to that, Ed worked as the organization's chief program officer for the Science Program.

Prior to coming to the Foundation, Ed served as dean of the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1981, he co-founded Chiron Corporation and served as its chief executive officer until 1998. For 10 years prior to founding Chiron, Ed was a faculty member of the Biochemistry Department of U.C. Berkeley.  Ed currently serves as the vice chairman of the Independent Citizen’s Oversight Committee which oversees the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine created by the passage of Proposition 71, the stem cell initiative.

Ed has received numerous awards, including the Association of Fundraising Professionals' Outstanding Philanthropist award, the first Distinguished Faculty Award in the Life Sciences from the department of Molecular and Cell Biology at U.C. Berkeley, the Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year Award presented by Ernst & Young and Inc. Magazine, and the Harvard Business School Northern California Alumni Chapter award as Entrepreneur of the Year.

Ed earned his A.B. in biology from Stanford University, and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Washington. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego.

To keep equally busy outside his daily work schedule, Ed has served as chairman of the California Health Care Institute, of the Chabot Space & Science Center, and of the San Francisco Bay Area Bioscience Center. Ed sits on the boards of  Zymogenetics, Scynexis, Metabolex and Renovis, Inc.  A member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and a member of the American Society of Biological Chemists, Ed has published more than 50 scientific articles and papers. He is married with two grown children and lives with his wife Camille in Northern California.