At its annual meeting on October 19, the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) announced the election of 100 new members, including MIT professor Michael Yaffe and six MIT alumni: Steven Allen Abrams ’79, Susan L. Ettner PhD ’91, Diane Medved Harper ’80, SM ’82, Albert Icksang Ko ’81, Jennifer Lewis ScD ’91, and Alexander Marson PhD ’08. Election is regarded as one of the highest honors in health and medicine, recognizing outstanding professional achievement and service.
Michael Yaffe holds the David H. Koch (1962) Professorship of Science, is the founding director of the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, and serves as a professor in the Biology and Biological Engineering departments as well as a member of the MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He also practices as a surgeon and intensivist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, focusing on trauma and surgical oncology, and was recently appointed senior advisor to the director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for the NCI Intramural Research Program. NAM cited Yaffe for “the discovery of phospho‑Ser/Thr‑binding domains in proteins and how they regulate signaling pathways controlling the cell cycle or in response to stress.” This finding spurred systems‑biology and bioinformatics approaches to map motifs across the kinome and elucidate biochemical principles governing kinase‑substrate selectivity. Yaffe’s broader work seeks to understand how DNA‑damage response, survival, cell‑cycle progression, and immune‑activation pathways are integrated at molecular and systems levels to shape tumor outcomes after treatment, and to translate these insights into more effective cancer‑drug combinations and therapeutic strategies.
Yaffe earned a PhD in biophysical chemistry and an MD from Case Western Reserve University. Before joining MIT in 2000, he completed general‑surgery residency at University Hospitals of Cleveland, surgical‑oncology residency at New England Deaconess Hospital, a fellowship in surgical critical care through Harvard‑Longwood Critical Care Program, and a postdoctoral fellowship with Lewis Cantley at Harvard Medical School. He is a decorated Afghanistan‑war veteran, retiring as a colonel from the U.S. Army Reserve Medical Corps in 2021. Yaffe also serves as scientific editor‑in‑chief of Science Signaling, is an elected member of the Association of American Physicians, and was named a 2021 MacVicar Faculty Fellow.
The MIT alumni elected to the 2026 NAM are affiliated with the following departments: Steven Allen Abrams ’79 (Biology), Susan L. Ettner PhD ’91 (Economics), Diane Medved Harper ’80, SM ’82 (Chemical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering), Albert Icksang Ko ’81 (Chemistry and Biology), Jennifer Lewis ScD ’91 (Materials Science & Engineering), and Alexander Marson PhD ’08 (Biology). Established in 1970 as the Institute of Medicine under the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine addresses critical issues in health, science, medicine, and related policy, and inspires positive action across sectors.
NAM President Monica M. Bertagnolli said, “I am thrilled to welcome these outstanding health and medicine leaders into the National Academy of Medicine. Their extraordinary talent and commitment to advancing evidence‑based guidance and solutions for our country’s greatest health‑care challenges will strengthen our efforts to improve health for all.”
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