Dr. Aled Edwards is founding and current CEO of the SGC, and on Faculty at the University of Toronto, Oxford and McGill. Founded in 2003, the SGC is a UK-based charity that is led from Canada, and is considered one of the pioneers of open science. 

With ~300 scientists in its laboratories in six countries, the SGC carries out science of relevance to drug discovery, yet never files for patents as a core principle, and places all its results and materials into the public domain without restriction. This commitment to open science is shared by all the funders of the SGC. These include ten multinational pharmaceutical companies, which have, since 2004, contributed over $200M to support the SGC and its open science mandate.