Randy W. Schekman is an American cell biologist at the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 and Editor-in-Chief of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, usually referred to as PNAS, is the official journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences...

. In 2011 he was announced as the editor of a new high profile open access journal published by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Howard Hughes Medical Institute is a United States non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded by the American businessman Howard Hughes in 1953. It is one of the largest private funding organizations for biological and medical research in the United...

, the Max Planck Society

Max Planck Society

The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes publicly funded by the federal and the 16 state governments of Germany....

 and the Wellcome Trust

Wellcome Trust

The Wellcome Trust was established in 1936 as an independent charity funding research to improve human and animal health. With an endowment of around £13.9 billion, it is the United Kingdom's largest non-governmental source of funds for biomedical research...

 launching in 2012. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

 in 1992.

In 2002, Schekman received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research

Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research

The Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research is one of the prizes awarded by the Lasker Foundation for the understanding, diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and cure of disease...

 and Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize

Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize

Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biology or Biochemistry is an annual prize awarded by Columbia University to a researcher or group of researchers that have made an outstanding contribution in basic research in the fields of biology or biochemistry....

 of Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 along with James Rothman

James Rothman

James E. Rothman is the Fergus F. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Yale University and at Yale University Medical School. He has received many honors, including the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University and the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research both in 2002...

 for their discovery of cellular membrane trafficking, a process that cells use to organize their activities and communicate with their environment.

The Schekman laboratory carries out research into molecular descriptions of the process of membrane assembly and vesicular

Vesicle (biology)

A vesicle is a bubble of liquid within another liquid, a supramolecular assembly made up of many different molecules. More technically, a vesicle is a small membrane-enclosed sack that can store or transport substances. Vesicles can form naturally because of the properties of lipid membranes , or...

 traffic in eukaryotic cells including yeast.

Career

• 1991 - present - Howard Hughes Medical Institute
  Howard Hughes Medical Institute
  Howard Hughes Medical Institute is a United States non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded by the American businessman Howard Hughes in 1953. It is one of the largest private funding organizations for biological and medical research in the United...
  
  Investigator, Division of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley