About Us

Mary Maxon, Ph.D., is the initiative lead for the Marine Microbiology Initiative.

Mary comes to the Foundation with many years of experience in basic and applied microbiological scientific research, and experience in the areas of science policy and the funding of scientific research.  Before joining the Foundation, she was deputy vice chair at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), California’s stem cell research granting agency where she developed the intellectual property policies for CIRM grantees, and helped architect the administrative infrastructure for stem cell research grants in California.  Prior to that, Mary lead the anti-infective drug discovery efforts at Cytokinetics, a biotech company in South San Francisco, and developed genetic engineering technology for unsequenced microorganisms at Microbia, a biotech company in Cambridge, MA.  At the Roche Institute for Molecular Biology, Mary discovered novel genes and regulatory pathways involved in amino acid metabolism in bacteria.

Mary received a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry from the State University of New York at Albany, a Ph.D. in Molecular Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley and did postdoctoral training in Genetics at the University of California, San Francisco.