Edward E. Penhoet (born December 11, 1940, in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

) co-founded Emeryville, California, based

Chiron In Greek mythology, Chiron ( ; also Cheiron or Kheiron; ) was held to be the superlative centaur amongst his brethren since he was called the "wisest and justest of all the centaurs". Biography Chiron was notable throughout Greek mythology ...

, an American multinational biotechnology firm known for its advancements in treatments of AIDS, hepatitis, multiple sclerosis, and kidney disease. He is associate dean of the Division of Biological Sciences at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

He was a member of the

President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is a council, chartered (or re-chartered) in each administration with a broad mandate to advise the president of the United States on science and technology. The current PCAST w ...

(PCAST) from 2009 until 2017. The council makes science, technology, and innovation policy recommendations to the President of the United States.

Early life and education

In 1963, Penhoet completed his Bachelor of Arts in

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, and then earned his Ph.D. in

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

in 1968. From 1986 to 1970, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

Career

After completing his postdoctoral fellowship in 1970, Penhoet served six years as an

assistant professor Assistant Professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States and Canada. Overview This position is generally taken after earning a doctoral degree and general ...

at the

. He then assumed the role of

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

in Berkeley’s Department of Biochemistry until 1983. Penhoet resigned from his position as tenured faculty to concentrate on Chiron, a company he co-founded in 1981, and served as president and chief executive officer until 1998. At various times during his tenure, he oversaw virtually all of Chiron’s company's activities, including research, finance, administration, human resources, manufacturing, and regulatory matters. Penhoet was on the board of directors at many biotech companies, including Zymogenetics, Chimerix, Scynexis, and Immune Design. From 1998 to 2002, Penhoet was

dean Dean may refer to: People * Dean (given name) * Dean (surname), a surname of Anglo-Saxon English origin * Dean (South Korean singer), a stage name for singer Kwon Hyuk * Dean Delannoit, a Belgian singer most known by the mononym Dean Titles * ...

of the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2002 until 2004, he was the chief scientific officer of the

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is an American foundation established by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore and his wife Betty I. Moore in September 2000 to support scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements a ...

, where he was also President from 2004 until 2008. Penhoet has also held roles as vice chair of the Independent Citizens oversight committee at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine from 2004 until 2008 and director of Alta Partners from 2000 until 2016. He previously served as the chairman of Immune Design, Inc. Penhoet has served on the board of directors of many local, state, and national organizations, including as chairman of the California Health Care Institute and the Chabot Space & Science Center boards and as a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Bioscience Center and Kaiser Permanente boards. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and was a member of the Science, Technology, and Economic Policy Board of the National Research Council, American Society of Biological Chemists, National Research Council Commission on Life Sciences, National Institutes of Health Economic Roundtable on Biomedical Research, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2009, he was an elected member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

, the

National Academy of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, En ...

, and the

American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) is a learned society that was founded on December 26, 1906, at a meeting organized by John Jacob Abel (Johns Hopkins University). The roots of the society were in the American Phy ...

. Also, in 2009, he was elected a member of the

(PCAST), a role he held until 2017.

Awards

Penhoet received the first Distinguished Faculty Award in 1991 from the Department of

Molecular A molecule is a group of two or more atoms held together by attractive forces known as chemical bonds; depending on context, the term may or may not include ions which satisfy this criterion. In quantum physics, organic chemistry, and bioche ...

and

Cell Biology Cell biology (also cellular biology or cytology) is a branch of biology that studies the structure, function, and behavior of cells. All living organisms are made of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life that is responsible for the living and ...

. With Chiron co-founder,

William J. Rutter William J. Rutter (born August 28, 1928) is an American biochemist who cofounded the early biotechnology company Chiron Corporation together with Edward Penhoet and Pablo DT Valenzuela. As Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysi ...

, Penhoet shared the North Californian Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1992, presented by the

Ernst & Young Ernst & Young Global Limited, trade name EY, is a multinational professional services partnership headquartered in London, England. EY is one of the largest professional services networks in the world. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and Pricewaterh ...

and

Inc. Magazine ''Inc.'' is an American business magazine founded in 1979 and based in New York City. The magazine publishes six issues per year, along with surrounding online and social media content. The magazine also produces several live and virtual events y ...

. They also received the

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

Northern California Alumni Chapter Award for Entrepreneur of the Year in 1994. Penhoet received the 201
Fiat Lux Faculty Award
from UC Berkeley, an achievement award for faculty members whose extraordinary contributions go above and beyond the university’s philanthropic mission and transform its research, teaching, and programs. Penhoet has also written over 50 scientific publications. The

Marquis Who's Who Marquis Who's Who ( or ) is an American publisher of a number of directories containing short biographies. The books usually are entitled ''Who's Who in...'' followed by some subject, such as ''Who's Who in America'', ''Who's Who of American Wome ...

has also listed him as a noteworthy dean, company executive, and foundation administrator.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Penhoet, Edward Living people Stanford University alumni University of Washington alumni Sandia National Laboratories people United States Deputy Secretaries of Energy Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering University of California, Berkeley people University of California, San Diego alumni 1949 births