Craik named a fellow of National Academy of Inventors

Charles S. Craik, PhD, whose innovative research has generated ten patents and helped launch two companies, has been named a fellow by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

Such fellow status is “accorded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society,” notes the NAI.

Craik is a faculty member in the School’s Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and serves as director of UCSF’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Graduate Program. He joins department and faculty colleague William DeGrado, PhD, who was named an NAI fellow in 2013. The NAI is a non-profit member organization, aimed at honoring academic invention.

Craik is internationally known for his work on proteolysis, both fundamental studies and the application of that knowledge to the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of disease. He holds ten U.S. patents, nine of which have been licensed, and he co-founded Catalyst Biosciences and Alaunus Biosciences. He serves on several industry scientific advisory boards and is active in pharmaceutical and biotech consulting.

The 170 new NAI Fellows will be inducted on March 20, 2015, as part of the academy’s fourth annual conference at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.