Dana-Farber President and CEO Dr. Benjamin Ebert elected to the National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences announced today the election of 120 members and 25 international members in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Among the new class of inductees, is Dr. Benjamin Ebert, president and CEO of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln, the National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and—with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine—provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.

Ebert’s laboratory research focuses on the molecular basis and treatment of hematologic malignancies and its non-malignant precursor conditions, with a particular focus on myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and clonal hematopoiesis. The Ebert laboratory demonstrated that lenalidomide, a derivative of thalidomide, binds the CRL4-CRBN E3 ubiquitin ligase and induces degradation of specific substrates. Subsequent research has examined novel mechanisms of drug-induced protein degradation that expand the spectrum of protein substrates that can be targeted pharmacologically.

In addition to his role as president and CEO of Dana-Farber, Ebert serves as director of the Harvard Cancer Consortium and the Richard and Susan Smith professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Ebert is also an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and the Academy of the American Association for Cancer Research. He served as president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 2017. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Broad Institute and Break Through Cancer.

Those elected to the National Academy today bring the total number of active members to 2,705 and the total number of international members to 557.