MIT Cancer Researcher Michael Yaffe, a Surgeon and Army Veteran, Among Seven MIT Affiliates Elected to the National Academy of Medicine

Seven people with MIT ties are among the 100 new members elected to the National Academy of Medicine for 2026, MIT News reported this week: faculty member Michael Yaffe and six alumni.

The academy announced the class at its annual meeting on Oct. 19. Election is considered one of the highest honors in health and medicine and recognizes outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service, MIT said.

Yaffe is the David H. Koch (1962) Professor of Science, founding director of the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, a professor in MIT's biology and biological engineering departments, and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He is also an attending surgeon and intensivist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, specializing in injury and surgical oncology, and was recently appointed senior adviser to the director of the National Cancer Institute for the NCI's Intramural Research Program, according to MIT. MIT News, which announced his election together with the six alumni honored alongside him, pictured him in the Koch Institute Public Galleries, the institute's public exhibition space.

The academy cited him 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." In plain terms, that is work on how certain protein regions recognize chemical tags that cells use to switch signals on and off, which govern when cells divide and how they respond to damage. MIT said his contributions were pivotal to "the emergence of systems biology and bioinformatic approaches to map motifs across the kinome and characterize biochemical principles that determine kinase-substrate selectivity." The kinome is the full set of kinases, enzymes that attach those tags.

His broader research asks how signaling pathways that control DNA damage responses, survival, cell division and immune activation fit together to determine how tumors respond to treatment, with the goal of designing more effective cancer drug combinations, according to MIT.

The "kinase-substrate selectivity" in the citation refers to which kinase acts on which protein, a question that matters for any effort to block one signal in a cancer cell without disrupting others. Yaffe's stated aim, as MIT describes it, is to turn findings about how these signals are wired into drug combinations that work better together than alone.

His path is unusual. Yaffe earned a doctorate in biophysical chemistry and a medical degree from Case Western Reserve University. Before joining MIT's faculty in 2000, he completed residencies in general surgery at University Hospitals of Cleveland and surgical oncology at New England Deaconess Hospital, a surgical critical care fellowship in Harvard Medical School's Harvard-Longwood program, and a postdoctoral fellowship with Lewis Cantley at Harvard Medical School. He is a decorated veteran of the war in Afghanistan and retired as a colonel from the U.S. Army Reserve Medical Corps in 2021. He is scientific editor-in-chief of the journal Science Signaling, an elected member of the Association of American Physicians and a 2021 MacVicar Faculty Fellow.

The six alumni elected, with their MIT departments as listed by MIT News: Steven Allen Abrams '79 (biology); Susan L. Ettner PhD '91 (economics); Diane Medved Harper '80, SM '82 (chemical engineering and materials science and engineering); Albert Icksang Ko '81 (chemistry and biology); Jennifer Lewis ScD '91 (materials science and engineering); and Alexander Marson PhD '08 (biology).

The spread of departments stands out. The group includes an economist, Ettner, and two alumni trained in materials science, Harper and Lewis, alongside biologists and a chemist. The academy's honor, as MIT describes it, recognizes achievement in health and medicine broadly, and MIT's list reflects that range: the alumni are listed with departments in science, engineering and economics rather than clinical fields.

"I am thrilled to welcome these outstanding health and medicine leaders into the National Academy of Medicine," said academy President Monica M. Bertagnolli. "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."

MIT's count has been steady. Its news office reported five people with MIT ties elected in 2025 and seven in 2024. The academy was established as the Institute of Medicine in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences and advises on health, science, medicine and policy.