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UF Health University of Florida
The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute
for Biomedical Innovation & Technology
About Us Overview

Facts at a Glance

The beautiful UF Scripps campus as seen from its interior courtyard.
The beautiful Wertheim UF Scripps campus as seen from its interior courtyard. Photo by Scott Wiseman.

The exciting past, present and future of The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology.

  • 2026 will mark the 22nd year since the launch of our institute as Scripps Florida. The three-building campus off Donald Ross Road in Jupiter, Florida has been open since 2009.
  • Since its founding in 2004, our research enterprise has returned more than $7 for every dollar the state and Palm Beach County have invested.
  • The institute’s annual operating budget is $60 million, from government grants, contracts, licensing income, philanthropic gifts and university support.
  • In April 2022, Scripps Florida integrated with the University of Florida’s academic health center, UF Health. The transition enables the research institute to more seamlessly accelerate the translation of basic scientific discoveries into clinical advances that benefit human health. 
  • In October of 2022, the Dr. Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Family Foundation pledged $100 million — the largest gift from an individual donor in University of Florida history — to elevate the stature of the institute as one of the world’s leading forces in biomedical research and to advance the leading-edge work of faculty at the campus in Jupiter, Florida. As a result, the campus was renamed in Dr. Wertheim’s honor.
  • The institute’s scientists have shown extraordinary inventiveness and entrepreneurialism, disclsing and applying for 59 new U.S. and international patents in the 2025-2026 academic year.
  • The institute’s scientists have spun off an average of one new biotechnology business per year. One invention, from the lab of Chistoph Rader, Ph.D., helped lead to the development of a novel antibody-drug combination against aggressive cancers. Another, from the lab of Joe G.N. “Skip” Garcia, M.D., acts on a master regulator of inflammation to treat inflammatory lung diseases. A third in clinical trials resensitizes glioblastoma to radiation treatment and prevents the cancer’s spread. Wertheim UF Scripps scientists have launched companies now focused on moving potential breakthrough treatments for addiction, depression, cancer, HIV, Parkinson’s, ALS and a form of muscular dystrophy.  
  • The institute’s commitment to high-impact science educational opportunities for people of all backgrounds is ironclad. More than 230 Palm Beach County high school students and science teachers have trained at our campus during summer internships, thanks to the generosity of the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust. Another 300 FAU Wilkes Honors College students have spent up to three semesters gathering data for their theses in our labs, learning from the institute’s scientists. 
  • The Florida branch of the Skaggs Graduate School of Chemical and Biological Sciences continues to operate at the institute. It has grown to include approximately 75 doctoral students, taught by nearly 40 faculty members in Florida, in close collaboration with graduate school faculty from Scripps Research in California.
  • Coming in the 2026-2027 academic year: The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute’s Ph.D. Program in Biomedical Sciences (BMS) will offer a rigorous and rewarding path toward a doctorate degree, designed for students eager to explore the frontiers of basic research, drug discovery, and medical innovation.
  • The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute campus houses unique and extraordinary technological and drug-discovery resources for scientists. These include the molecular imaging center, equipped with cryo-electron microscopy, the robotic high-throughput molecular screening center with a library of hundreds of thousands of drug-like molecules, and the Natural Products Discovery Center, where scientists mine a historic collection of microbe samples for genomic clues of biological potential to treat human diseases.