Scripps Research Institute

Scripps Research is a private nonprofit biomedical research institute based in La Jolla, California, with a second campus in Jupiter, Florida. It began as the Scripps Metabolic Clinic, established in 1924 with support from philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps, and developed into an independent institute for chemistry, chemical biology, immunology, neuroscience, and molecular medicine.

Doctoral training is housed in the Skaggs Graduate School of Chemical and Biological Sciences. Students join faculty laboratories rather than a conventional undergraduate-facing college. Core facilities cover structural biology, genomics, and drug discovery; the Scripps Research Translational Institute links laboratory work to clinical studies. The La Jolla campus lies on the Torrey Pines mesa beside other research institutes and the University of California, San Diego.

The institute employs more than 2,000 people, including hundreds of faculty and scientific staff, and trains a few hundred graduate students and a larger group of postdoctoral fellows. International researchers are a large share of the scientific workforce. Faculty include Nobel laureates K. Barry Sharpless in chemistry and Ardem Patapoutian in physiology or medicine. Graduates of the doctoral program move into academic and industry laboratories.

The degree on offer is the PhD in chemical and biological sciences. Students complete rotations, then dissertation research under a principal investigator, with a limited formal coursework load. Student support typically comes from institute and laboratory funding. Daily life is that of a research campus on the San Diego coast, with housing in nearby La Jolla, University City, and other coastal communities.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, Scripps Research Institute lists 2 graduate programs in chemistry, all of them doctoral programs.