Board of Trustees

Rusty Williams is the founder of FivePrime, serves as its executive chairman, and leads its research and development efforts. Prior to founding FivePrime, Williams was chief scientific officer and a member of the board of directors of Chiron Corporation and president of Chiron Technologies. Prior to joining Chiron, Williams was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, San Francisco, where he was a professor of medicine and director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute and the Daiichi Research Center. Earlier in his career he was assistant professor of medicine (cardiology) at Harvard Medical School and he had a clinical practice at Massachusetts General Hospital. Williams is a cofounder of COR Therapeutics Inc., and served as a member of its board of directors. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been a member of the Duke University board of trustees from 2001 to 2009 and is also on the boards of Juvaris BioTherapeutics. Williams received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University and trained in internal medicine and cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Williams comes from a musically oriented family and he has diverse musical interests. He enjoys playing trumpet and is learning piano with a focus on jazz and blues.