Vice Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer
Jonathan Knowles, PhD, joined the Caris Life Sciences™ (Caris) Board of Directors on September 1, 2009 and accepted the position of vice chairman starting on January 1, 2010. He accepted the additional position of chief scientific officer in May 2010. In these capacities, Dr. Knowles provides scientific and strategic guidance, supports the identification and expansion of R&D opportunities, and assists with the development of Caris' international presence. Dr. Knowles' appointments to these positions continues a distinguished career that has spanned decades in both academia and the pharmaceutical industry, including most recently his role as president of group research at Roche, a position he held since 2007, and member of that organization's Corporate Executive Committee since 1998.
Dr. Knowles was a member of the Genentech Board for the last 12 years and a member of the Chugai Board for seven years.
Dr. Knowles was also the chairman of the Corporate Governance Committee of Genentech. He was for five years the chairman of the Research Directors' Group of EFPIA (European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations) and was the first chairman of the Board of the Innovative Medicines Initiative, a unique public-private partnership between 28 Pharmaceutical companies and the European Commission with a budget of more than 2 Billion Euros over five years. Dr. Knowles focused the company on key disease biology areas of high medical need and in-depth understanding of molecular pathology of disease. Under his leadership, the company developed and implemented a strategy of highly effective therapies based on personalized healthcare and built one of the best pharmaceutical pipelines in the sector.
Dr. Knowles attended Magdalen College School in Oxford and received a first class honours degree in molecular genetics from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. He received his PhD in genetics of mitochondria with Professor G. H. Beale FRS from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Jonathan Knowles has been recently appointed a professor of translational medicine at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, has been awarded a distinguished professorship in personalized health care at the Finnish Institute for Molecular Medicine at the University of Helsinki, and has been appointed as a visiting chair at the University of Oxford. In addition, he is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization and a William Pitt Fellow of Pembroke College Cambridge.
