Dr. Perlmutter is President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of Eikon Therapeutics, Inc., a private biotechnology company that employs advanced imaging technologies to identify novel therapeutic candidates by virtue of their effects on protein dynamics in living cells.  He was previously Executive Vice President, Merck & Co., and President of Merck Research Laboratories where he supervised the discovery and development of more than two dozen lifesaving medicines including KEYTRUDA ™ , Merck’s foundational immuno-oncology therapeutic, which continues to transform cancer care throughout the world. Before this, Dr. Perlmutter spent 12 years as Executive Vice President and head of R&D at Amgen, Inc., where he is credited with having revolutionized the development of biopharmaceuticals for the treatment of autoimmune disease, osteoporosis and cancer-related bone disease, and for the reduction of hypercholesterolemia-related cardiovascular risk.
Prior to his work in the biopharmaceutical industry, Dr. Perlmutter was a professor in the Departments of Immunology, Biochemistry and Medicine at the University of Washington, Seattle, and also served as Chairman of its Department of Immunology, where he was at the same time an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research focused on understanding the signaling pathways that control lymphocyte activation. Prior to moving to Seattle, he was a lecturer in the Division of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. 
A graduate of Reed College (Portland, OR), where he has for more than a decade chaired the Board of Trustees, and the Washington University (St. Louis) School of Medicine, Dr. Perlmutter is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and both a Distinguished Fellow and past president of the American Association of Immunologists.