Aled Edwards is the founding and current CEO of the SGC, a public-private charitable partnership that generates research tools and knowledge to support basic science and drug discovery. Led from Canada, the SGC comprises ~300 scientists who are located in 6 universities (University of Toronto, University of North Carolina, Frankfurt University, McGill University, University College, London, Karolinska Institute)

The SGC is considered a pioneer of open science and open drug discovery. Since 2004, SGC has contributed ~10% of all known human protein structures into the public databases and has published over 2,000 papers, of which ~200 are co-authored with scientists in industry.

Prior to launching the SGC, Al co-founded and served as CEO and CSO of Affinium Pharmaceuticals, whose first-in-class antibiotic (afabicin) is now in late-stage clinical studies. In 2019, Al co-founded M4K Pharma, the world’s first open science drug discovery company. In 2020, Al co-founded YCharOS, which was the 2021 recipient of the Irv and Helga International Prize in Open Science.