Eric Toone

Dr. Eric Toone is the Principal Deputy Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), responsible for oversight of all of ARPA-E including direct oversight of ARPA-E’s Electrofuels program. In addition to his role at ARPA-E, Toone is currently the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biochemistry at Duke University.

Toone is a scientific founder of two venture-backed companies: Aerie Pharmaceuticals, a research-based ophthalmology company, and Vindica Pharmaceuticals, a nitric oxide delivery company.

He has served as a permanent member of the Bioorganic and Natural Products Study Section at the National Institutes of Health, and is currently a member of the NSERC Organic & Inorganic Review panel (Canada).

Toone has authored over 100 scientific papers and over 30 patents. He is an associate editor of the journal Biopolymers and the editor in chief of the monograph series Advances in Enzymology.

He studied chemistry as an undergraduate at the University of Guelph, graduating in 1983. That same year he moved to the University of Toronto to begin graduate studies with Professor J. Bryan Jones. Toone graduated from the University of Toronto in 1988 and moved to Harvard University to continue his studies with Professor George Whitesides.