[1] Born and raised in northern Massachusetts, Ganem graduated in 1968 from Phillips Academy Andover and in 1972 from Harvard College.
At the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), he did subspecialty training in infectious diseases, working in Harold Varmus's laboratory.
[3] Ganem became a faculty member at UCSF in 1982,[2] rising eventually to the rank of Professor of Microbiology & Immunology and Medicine.
[5] At UCSF, his work initially focused on the molecular basis of hepatitis B virus (HBV) replication and assembly.
[33][34][35] In 2011, Ganem left UCSF to become the Global Head of Infectious Diseases Research at Novartis, where he led teams developing novel antivirals for respiratory viruses, HBV, herpesviruses, and polyomaviruses, as well as new antibiotics for multi-resistant gram-negative bacteria.