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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 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.

  • 2023 will mark the 19th 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 $6 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, producing more than 170 clusters of patents, with each containing 1 to 6 patent applications since the institute launched as of 2021.
  • 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 currently in clinical trials at MD Anderson and other sites. Other UF Scripps scientists have launched companies now focused on moving potential breakthrough treatments for addiction, glioblastoma, depression, cancer, HIV, Parkinson’s, ALS and a form of muscular dystrophy toward clinical trials.  
  • The institute’s commitment to high-impact science educational opportunities for people of all backgrounds is ironclad. Nearly 200 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. 
  • In 2022, The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute launched another on-ramp for pursuit of careers in science, a post-bac program. Called PREP, short for the Postbaccalaureate Research and Education Program, it is an immersive, yearlong research experience geared toward recent bachelor’s degree recipients who seek to increase their academic and laboratory skills in preparation for application to high-caliber, research-oriented Ph.D. programs.
  • 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 80 doctoral students, taught by nearly 40 faculty members in Florida, in close collaboration with graduate school faculty from Scripps Research in California.