Ed Penhoet is a member of the board of trustees. He was the Foundation's president from 2004 - 2007. Prior to that, he was the Director of Alta Partners, and Chairman of the Board for Immune Design and Metabolex. He serves on the boards of directors of ChemoCentryx, Chimerix, Scynexis, and ZymoGenetics. A co-founder of Chiron, Penhoet served as the Company's President and Chief Executive Officer from its formation in 1981 until April 1998. He is a member of the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee for the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). For 10 years prior to founding Chiron, Edward was a faculty member of the Biochemistry Department of the University of California, Berkeley. Edward is the immediate past Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Society of Biological Chemists, and in 2009, he was appointed a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Penhoet earned his A.B. in biology from Stanford University in 1963, and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Washington in 1968. He was a post-doctoral fellow at UC San Diego, from 1968 to 1970.

In 1991, Dr. Penhoet received the first Distinguished Faculty Award in the Life Sciences from the department of Molecular and Cell Biology, UCB. In 1992, he shared with Dr. William Rutter, a Chiron co-founder, the Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year Award presented by Ernst & Young and Inc. Magazine. In 1994, they received jointly the Harvard Business School Northern California Alumni Chapter award as Entrepreneur of the Year. He has published more than 50 scientific articles and papers.