Board of Directors
Malin Burnham - Chair As of January 2008, Malin Burnham is the retired chairman of John Burnham & Company Insurance and Burnham Real Estate and has been involved with these organizations since 1949. In addition to his involvement with the Burnham Companies, he has been active as a board member of several major corporations and 16 firms, in total. His present involvements include Chairman of The Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute and San Diego Hall of Champions Foundation, UCSD Foundation and Rady School of Management. Burnham has chaired nine major non-profits and has co-founded 14 organizations in his career, most providing direct benefit to San Diego and the nation. He is a native San Diegan who graduated from Stanford University in 1949 with a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering.
Irwin M. Jacobs, Sc.D. - Co-Chair Irwin M. Jacobs, Sc.D., is co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of Qualcomm Incorporated. Jacobs served as chief executive officer of the Company until July 2005. He previously served as co-founder, president, chief executive officer and chairman of LINKABIT Corporation through its merger with M/A-COM in August 1980. He is a former assistant/associate professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Clinton in1994, elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1982 and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 200. Jacobs received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1956 from Cornell University and master's and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from MIT in 1957 and 1959, respectively.
T. Denny Sanford - Co-Chair Denny Sanford was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the height of the Great Depression. He started working at the age of eight. He earned a degree in psychology from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and began a career in sales and marketing management. In 1966, Sanford started Contech, a specialty chemical company which was sold in 1982 and followed by a career in private equity investments. In 1986, he purchased United National Bank, which was renamed First Premier Bank. Under his leadership, First Premier has grown its assets to almost $1 billion. Another business, Premier Bankcard Inc., which he started, has become a national leader in the credit card industry. In 2001, Sanford formed the Sanford Foundation. He is now recognized as one of the most generous philanthropists in the country. In 2007, Sanford donated $470 million to South Dakota-based Sioux Valley Hospitals & Health System to create Sanford Health. Later that year, he donated $20 million through Sanford Health to the Burnham Institute for Medical Research (renamed the Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute) to create the Sanford Children's Health Research Center. The following year he donated $30 million to the San Diego Stem Cell Consortium, now the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine. In 2010 he issued a $50 million matching gifts challenge to benefit the Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute bringing his total philanthropic investment in San Diego to $100 million. Sanford is now a part-time San Diegan.
William R. Brody, MD William R. Brody, joined the Salk Institute for Biological Studies as president on March 2, 2009 after 12 years as president of The Johns Hopkins University. He is a national figure in efforts to encourage innovation and strengthen the U.S. economy through investments in research and education. Most recently, he has written and spoken extensively around the country to promote a fuller discussion of health care reform.
Renowned for his achievements in biomedical engineering, Dr. Brody is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. Before being named president of Johns Hopkins University, he served as provost of the Academic Health Center at the University of Minnesota for two years. Prior to that, he held appointments at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from 1987 to 1994, including the Martin Donner Professor and Director of the department of Radiology. He previously held appointments at the Stanford University School of Medicine from 1977 to 1986, including Professor of Radiology and Electrical Engineering.
Dr. Brody received his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his doctorate (also in electrical engineering) and his medical degree (M.D.) from Stanford University.He continued his post-graduate training in cardiovascular surgery and radiology at Stanford, the National Institutes of Health, and the University of California at San Francisco. The Canadian Association of Radiologists recognized Dr. Brody's contributions by making him an honorary member in 1974. He is also the recipient of the Outstanding Alumnus Award from UC San Francisco's department of Radiology; the American Heart Association's Established Investigator Award; and the Western Thoracic Surgical Society Prize Manuscript Award.
He currently serves on a number of national boards, including: IBM, Stanford University and Novartis. He is on the FBI's National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, and is a member of the executive committee of the Council on Competitiveness. He formerly served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and on the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mitchell Kronenberg, Ph.D. Dr. Kronenberg is an internationally recognized scientist and one of the most highly cited immunologists in the world. This distinction is held by less than one half of one percent of all publishing scientific authors. Dr. Kronenberg was appointed President of La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology (LIAI) in September 2003. In addition to his executive duties, he serves as Chief Scientific Officer and conducts an active research program.
He received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1983, and stayed on to complete his postdoctoral work before joining the faculty of the UCLA School of Medicine in 1986. At UCLA, he rose through the ranks to full professor. In 1997, he came to La Jolla Institute to head the Division of Developmental Immunology, a position he held for 14 years, before stepping down recently to devote more time to his duties as President and Chief Scientific Officer.
Over the years, Dr. Kronenberg has received many major awards, most recently a prestigious Merit Award for scientific achievement from the National Institutes of Health. He has also been a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Visiting Professor at Harvard University and recently was asked to deliver the Joseph S. Ingraham immunology lecture at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Edward W. Holmes, M.D. Edward W. Holmes, M.D., is a Distinguished Professor of the University of California and Vice Chancellor/Dean Emeritus of Health Sciences at UC San Diego. He is also Executive Deputy Chairman of the Biomedical Research Council and Chairman of the National Medical Research Council, Singapore.
Holmes has served on numerous advisory boards including the National Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases Advisory Council of the National Institutes of Health, the Board of Directors of Tularik, and the Scientific Advisory Board of GlaxoSmithKline which he chairs. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
He holds a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania.