Team

Kivanc Birsoy, Ph.D. is a Chapman-Perelman Associate Professor at Rockefeller University. His research at Rockefeller focuses on how cancer cells rewire their metabolic pathways to adapt to the environmental stress conditions during tumorigenesis. He also used similar approaches to study how mitochondrial dysfunction influences cellular metabolism. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Special Fellow award, Margaret and Herman Sokol Award, NIH Career Transition Award, Irma Hirschl/Monique Weill-Caulier Trusts Award, Sidney Kimmel Cancer Foundation Scholar Award, March of Dimes Basil O’Connor Scholar Award, AACR NextGen award for Transformative Cancer Research, Searle Scholar, Pew-Stewart Scholarship for Cancer Research and NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

Kivanc received his undergraduate degree in Molecular Genetics from Bilkent University in Turkey in 2004 and his Ph.D. from the Rockefeller University in 2009, where he studied molecular genetics of obesity in the laboratory of Jeffrey Friedman. At the Whitehead Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he combined forward genetics and metabolomics approaches to understand how different cancer types rewire their metabolism to adapt nutrient deprived environments.

Benjamin Cravatt, PhD is the Gilula Chair of Chemical Biology and Professor in the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute. His research group develops and applies chemical proteomic technologies for protein and drug discovery on a global scale and has particular interest in studying biochemical pathways in cancer and the nervous system. His honors include a Searle Scholar Award, the Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry, a Cope Scholar Award, the ASBMB Merck Award, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, and memberships in the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Ben is a co-founder of several biotechnology companies, including Activx Biosciences (acquired by Kyorin Pharmaceuticals), Abide Therapeutics (acquired by Lundbeck Pharmaceuticals), Vividion Therapeutics (Acquired by Bayer Pharmaceuticals), Boundless Bio, Kisbee Therapeutics, and Kojin Therapeutics.

Ben obtained his undergraduate education at Stanford University, receiving a BS in the Biological Sciences and a BA in History. He then received a PhD from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in 1996, and joined the faculty at TSRI in 1997.

Dr. William Sellers is a core institute member and director of the cancer program at the Broad Institute and a professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. At the Broad Institute, Dr. Sellers directs a research group focused on translating genomic discoveries into new therapeutics. His lab is focused on both functional genomic approaches to understanding routes for therapeutic development including digenic paralog CRISPR screens, and systematic gain-of-function lethality screens, and on creating new routes for developing therapeutics and understanding therapeutic action.

Previously, Dr. Sellers directed cancer drug discovery and early cancer clinical development at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, where he oversaw all cancer research and clinical sites from 2005 to 2016. During this time, more than 30 small molecule, biologic and cell-based cancer therapeutics entered first-in-human trials. Ten therapeutics have reached market approval, including encorafinib, alpelisib, ribociclib, asciminib and tisagenlecleucel.

Earlier, Dr. Sellers was an associate professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School and an associate member of the Broad Institute. He collaborated with his Dana-Farber and Broad colleague Matthew Meyerson to lead the Broad’s first major foray into cancer genome sequencing. Their work, as well as work by other groups including investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital, led to the identification of EGFR mutations in lung cancer – work that paved the way for EGFR-inhibiting drugs becoming standard-of-care for patients.

Among other achievements in his career, Dr. Seller’s was the founder of Civetta Therapeutics, a co-founder of Delphia Therapeutics and currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Ideaya Bioscience and Epidarex Capital. Additionally, Dr. Sellers was a previous member of the National Cancer Advisory Board.

Dr. Sellers holds a BS from Georgetown University and MD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He completed residency training in internal medicine at the University of California San Francisco and trained in medical oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.