Bill Rastetter, Ph.D.

Bill focuses on making and growing investments in biotechnology. Bill served on the board of Illumina for 17 years including 10 years as chairman and now represents Illumina as an outside director of their majority owned subsidiary GRAIL. He also serves as chairman for two San Diego companies: Neurocrine Biosciences and Fate Therapeutics. He is the lead outside director for Cerulean, and on the board of directors of Regulus. Bill is an advisor to Leerink Partners, a healthcare focused investment bank; additionally, he serves on the Board of Trustees for Caltech. He was a founder and the chairman of Receptos, which was sold to Celgene in August 2015.

Bill led the “merger of equals” that formed Biogen Idec in 2003 and retired as executive chairman at the end of 2005. Bill joined Idec Pharmaceuticals at its founding in 1986 and grew it to a multibillion-dollar market valuation company, while serving as chairman and CEO. While at Idec, he was a co-inventor of Rituxan®, which became the first monoclonal antibody approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for cancer, and one of the world’s most valuable cancer therapies. Prior to Idec, he served in various capacities at Genentech. Previously, Bill held various faculty positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), won the award for “Excellence in the Teaching of Chemistry” at Harvard University, and was named an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow.

Bill earned his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from MIT and his master’s degree and PhD in Chemistry from Harvard.