Benjamin Cravatt III

Who is Benjamin Cravatt III?

Benjamin Franklin Cravatt III is a professor in and chair of the Department of Chemical Physiology at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Considered the co-inventor of activity based proteomics with Matthew Bogyo, he is a prominent figure in the nascent field of chemical biology.

Cravatt attended Stanford University, earning BS in the Biological Sciences and a BA in History. He then received a PhD in Macromolecular and Cellular Structure and Chemistry from The Scripps Research Institute in 1996, where he worked under the joint supervision of Dale L. Boger and Richard Lerner. His early contributions to the cannabinoid field include identification and characterization of the endocannabinoid-terminating enzyme fatty acid amide hydrolase, FAAH, as well as the isolation of the novel soporific compound oleamide from cerebrospinal fluid. Since these contributions, his research program has expanded to include proteomics, metabolomics, and chemical methods for functionally annotating the roles of serine hydrolase enzymes in cancer and endocannabinoid signaling.

Cravatt is a Cope and Searle Scholar, and the co-founder of ActivX Biosciences. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and previously served in the same capacity for Chemical Science.