The Hazen Campus at Scripps Research has been an architectural landmark since 1995. The campus exemplifies a fusion of functional design and brilliance. Not just a structure but a ‘monastery for scientists,’ it is a testament to enduring architectural standards and a cradle for scientific discovery.

📣 Front Row lecture series resumes August 19! Each free lecture is offered virtually or in person at the Scripps Research Auditorium at 4:00 p.m. PT. Be sure to check out #ScienceinAction, an interactive showcase hosted by the speaker's lab. More: https://ow.ly/6Vgg50Zrxgh

At #ScienceInAction, the Erb lab showed how miniaturized, high-throughput screening helps scientists make and test thousands of chemical compounds in search of molecular glues, then use cell-based and genomic tools to identify compounds that may target cancers through new mechanisms.

The International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life - The International Astrobiology Society has awarded Prof. Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy the Aleksandr Ivanovich Oparin Medal for “best sustained scientific research in the origin of life field.” More: https://ow.ly/JM7l50ZruvP

Congrats to Phil Baran, recipient of the 2026 Mitsui Chemicals Catalysis Science Award for pioneering catalytic radical cross-coupling methods that enable efficient construction of complex molecules using abundant metals and readily available starting materials. More: https://ow.ly/K0Hj50ZqRIY

John Diekman funds and builds next-generation life sciences companies, while Sue Diekman lends her expertise to several nonprofits. Though their charitable interests are diverse, the couple always takes a hands-on approach to giving. More: https://ow.ly/6LNh50ZnsMZ

M. Reza Ghadiri has spent decades asking how life’s complexity can arise from basic chemical building blocks. But behind the theories is a story that begins earlier—inside a childhood bedroom filled with improvised experiments, stained walls and the smell of sulfur. More: https://ow.ly/JnjW50ZnszF

Growing up in rural Littlerock, CA, Alexandra Salazar didn’t picture herself becoming a scientist. Today, she's studying in the Lander Lab, developing new cryo-EM approaches to visualize proteins inside mitochondria and better understand disease. More: https://ow.ly/rfx750Zc1W2

President of the Scripps Research Computational Biology & Bioinformatics affinity group and graduate student Ian Newman spoke with participants in our inaugural AI Hackathon, hosted with Amazon Web Services (AWS), where researchers explored agentic AI and cloud computing. 🔗 https://ow.ly/YV3W50ZiSaF

More than 100 scientists affiliated with Scripps Research were recognized in Research.com’s 2026 Best Scientists rankings across immunology, biology and biochemistry, chemistry, medicine and more. �� https://ow.ly/urwL50ZfYfYBi

Postdoctoral fellow Júlia Castro has been named to the 2026 class of Pew Latin American Fellows Program in the Biomedical Sciences! A member of Renan V. H. de Carvalho, Ph.D.'s lab, she's among 10 fellows receiving funding from The Pew Trusts to study the immune system. 🔗 https://ow.ly/9vJE50ZfXV3

How do scientists study antibody interactions with HIV? 🔬 Recent Scripps Research alum Sharidan Brown, PhD, takes us inside the cryo-EM workflow, from plunge-freezing samples and collecting micrographs to building molecular models that help inform vaccine design.

🤝 Cross-Disciplinary: Alma (ViralBeat Studio) ViralBeat Studio visualizes virus capsid structures through music, animating their symmetry axes in real time based on audio features while blending structural biology, data visualization and art into an interactive teaching tool.

🤖 Claude’s Choice: SpinHance SpinHance uses deep learning to extract chemical shifts, coupling constants and other molecular parameters from low-field NMR spectra, enabling researchers to predict spectra across different magnetic field strengths.

🎤 Best Presentation: TalkToYourStructure - Mol*-MCP This tool translates plain-English requests into interactive 3D molecular structure views, helping researchers move from a list of variants to structural insights in a web browser while making structural biology data easier to explore.

🔬Scientific Merit: Ward Waste Services Cryo-EM experiments can generate thousands of particle images, many of which contain little useful information, so this team developed AI approaches for distinguishing protein-containing images from low-quality “junk” classes to improve experiment throughput.

🧬Biggest Impact: Annotator This team evaluated whether large language models could help identify cell types from single-cell RNA sequencing data, comparing AI-generated annotations with established reference-mapping approaches and highlighting new possibilities for analyzing cellular data.

💡Most Innovative: BrainOrganoidBuilder (BOB) BOB combines electrophysiology data with 3D visualization, transforming recordings from brain organoids into spatial animations of neuronal firing and population bursts that offer a new way to explore and communicate brain activity.

🏆Grand Prize: AgenticPeerReview (Team C) PeerReviewAgents is a multi-agent AI “editorial board” that reviews manuscripts through specialist reviewers, debate, author rebuttal and editorial recommendations, using Anthropic Claude models to coordinate the review process from submission to decision.

More than 100 scientists from across Scripps Research came together for the institute’s inaugural AI Hackathon and Training Event. Over three days, 15 interdisciplinary teams explored how emerging technologies could help accelerate biomedical discovery. Here’s a look at what they built ⬇️

Congrats to Daniel B. McClatchy on receiving the Al Yergey Mass Spectrometry Scientist Award at the 2026 ASMS Conference. 🎉 McClatchy was recognized for pioneering advances in neuroproteomics, including SILAM and PALM workflows for quantitative in vivo proteomics. More: https://ow.ly/Heoq50Zc0HQ

Calibr-Skaggs has been awarded up to $5.1M from the NIH to develop a long-acting injectable therapy for people living with both HIV and hepatitis B virus (HBV), aiming to replace daily pills with a once-monthly—or even quarterly—injections. More: https://ow.ly/7XbI50ZcpSZ

In his Front Row lecture, Michael Erb took the audience inside the cell to explain how his team is developing “proximity” drugs, an innovation that has implications to change how scientists and cells join forces to fight against breast, prostate and blood cancers. More: https://ow.ly/mT9v50ZbivL

The Baran lab reports a new stereoretentive radical-radical cross-coupling reaction that enables alkyl–alkyl bond formation while maintaining 80–96% enantiospecificity. Published in Science Magazine, the method works across a range of pharmaceutically relevant molecules. https://ow.ly/lvyP50Za5tw

We got to see drug discovery up close inside Associate Professor Michael Erb's laboratory, where his team combines chemistry and biology to develop proximity-inducing drugs using automated machines to help synthesize and test thousands of compounds at once.

Congratulations to Asst. Prof. Alejandra Mendoza, recipient of a Health Innovator Award from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation! The grant will support her project, “Neuro-immune Networks in Chronic Intestinal Inflammation,” focused on advancing IBD research.

An experimental HIV vaccine regimen from scientists at Scripps Research and Karolinska Institutet elicited apex-targeted cross-neutralizing antibodies in every preclinical model tested. Published in Nature the vaccines generated responses against multiple HIV strains. More: https://ow.ly/pfKk50Z5Hcp

Congrats to Daniel B. McClatchy, recipient of the Al Yergey Mass Spectrometry Scientist Award from the ASMS. McClatchy was recognized for pioneering advances in neuroproteomics, including SILAM and PALM workflows for quantitative in vivo proteomics. More: https://ow.ly/I0Bj50Z6lrx

Meet Kristal Stevens, a 3rd-year PhD candidate in the Bollong lab studying regenerative therapies through the Hippo pathway. Outside the lab, she channels the wonder of science into vibrant artwork—one of which was featured on the cover of ChemBioChem in February 2025.

Congratulations to Scripps Research Professor Jin-Quan Yu, who has been elected to the Fellowship of The Royal Society, the U.K.’s national academy of sciences, for his pioneering work in synthetic organic chemistry and carbon–hydrogen (C–H) activation research. More: https://ow.ly/GWJr50Z4TaP