Benjamin Cravatt Elected to National Academy of Medicine

LA JOLLA, CA – October 16, 2017 – Benjamin Cravatt, professor and co-chair of the Department of Molecular Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), has been elected as a member of the prestigious National Academy of Medicine.

Election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

“Ben is a remarkable scientist whose discoveries have greatly expanded new opportunities for drug development,” said TSRI President and CEO Peter Schultz. “This honor is well-deserved and reflects the importance of Ben’s work and the esteem in which he is regarded in the scientific community.”

Cravatt is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, to which he was elected in 2014. This puts him in a select group of scientists who have been honored with election to two of the three branches of the National Academies.

A prominent and inventive chemical biologist, Cravatt’s research focuses on the role proteins play in cellular processes and how that knowledge can be used to identify novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of human disease. He has played a prominent role in developing and applying activity-based proteomics methods, which use chemical probes for the global analysis of protein function and drug action in native biological systems. This work has enabled the exploration of molecular drug targets once thought unreachable.

Cravatt’s election to the National Academy of Medicine now expands to 10, the number of TSRI members in the distinguished group. In addition, TSRI has 21 members of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering.

Cravatt holds an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and is an alumnus of the TSRI graduate program (class of ‘96), where he earned a doctorate in Macromolecular and Cellular Structure and Chemistry. Previous honors include his 2016 election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the country’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers.

Cravatt is a co-founder of Vividion Therapeutics, Abide Therapeutics and ActivX Biosciences and currently serves as an associate editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

He was among 70 newly elected members and 10 foreign associates announced by the National Academy of Medicine today.

New members are elected by current active members through a selective process that recognizes individuals who have made major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care and public health. 

For the full list of new members, see the National Academy of Medicine press release.