Paul Schimmel

Paul Schimmel is the Ernest and Jean Hahn Professor of Molecular Medicine and of Chemistry at Scripps Research. Prior to joining The Scripps, he was the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at MIT. Author or co-author of over 500 scientific research publications, he is also co-author of a widely used 3-volume textbook on biophysical chemistry. His research interests have focused on aminoacyl tRNA synthetases as fundamental interpreters of genetic information. Through career-long investigations of this ancient and universal set of essential enzymes, his laboratory has worked on a universal mechanism for correcting errors in the interpretation of genetic information and went on to show how this mechanism is essential for maintaining cellular homeostasis and for preventing serious pathologies and disease. His laboratory also discovered what others have referred to as a primordial, or ‘second’, genetic code that eventually was incorporated into the modern code.

Schimmel holds a portfolio of patents and is a co-founder or founding director of what matured into seven NASDAQ-listed enterprises that developed new medicines that flowed out of academic research. These enterprises created FDA-approved medicines. Lives saved by just one of these medicines are estimated as over 800,000.