Scripps Research postdoctoral fellow Evert Njomen, PhD, has been awarded a highly competitive Hanna H. Gray Fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). 

The award, which provides $1.4 million in funding over eight years, will support Njomen’s research on the body’s system for recycling cellular waste, known as autophagy, and the central role it plays in the immune system’s control of pathogens. 

Njomen is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Ben Cravatt, PhD, holder of the Gilula Chair of Chemical Biology and a professor in the Department of Chemistry. She is using chemical probes to identify potential drug molecules that could modify the autophagy process and target broad-spectrum pathogens, including drug-resistant strains of bacteria .