John Carney

John Carney was born in Chicago back in 1947, but his family decided to escape from the cold and windy city for the warm and sunny environs of Southern California when he was about six years old.  It was in San Diego that John fell in love with the Pacific Ocean and sportfishing, an infatuation with fishing and being on the ocean that is still with him today. John travels north to Alaska every year to fish for salmon and halibut and south to California to fish for tuna, supplying some to the Wednesday Meal program and offering some for auction in the music program's annual fundraising auctions.

John's professional career has been a blend of his fishing interests (receiving a Masters Degree from San Diego State University in Marine Biology and working with Sea World and Scripps Institute of Oceanography) and his interest in medical research problems, which led him to earn a Ph.D. in Pharmacology. 

John met my wife, Patricia, in the research laboratory at the University of Michigan, where he got his Ph.D.  His academic career took him from Ann Arbor to Richmond, VA, to Oklahoma City to Lexington, KY, and finally to the San Francisco Bay area.  While he was working at the small biopharmaceutical company he founded in Sunnyvale, CA, John was recruited to join an elite research institute in Washington, D.C., called DARPA. He was given the job of leading the research program to discover novel therapeutics against potential biowarfare pathogens. Among other advances, the program discovered the approaches needed to develop what is today the COVID vaccine. 

While he am semi-retired, John still enjoys consulting with researchers, helping to solve research problems and, of course, going out fishing.