Tufts professor named Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors

James Schwob uses the mechanisms behind how we smell for a deeper understanding of the regulation of the development of neurons

2025-12-11

(Press-News.org) James (Jim) Schwob, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

Election as an academy fellow is the highest professional distinction awarded solely to inventors. The NAI was founded to recognize and encourage inventors with U.S. patents and enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation.

This year’s fellows include Nobel Prize winners and recipients of the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation and Medal of Science. The group, which holds over 5,300 issued U.S. patents, includes members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, among others.

The new NAI fellows are “a driving force within the innovation ecosystem, and their contributions across scientific disciplines are shaping the future of our world,” said Paul Sanberg, president of the NAI.

Schwob started his faculty career at SUNY Upstate Medical University after earning his MD/Ph.D. at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also was a resident in anatomic pathology and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in developmental neurobiology.

He has been a professor, first in the Department of Anatomy and Cellular Biology and now in the successor department, Developmental, Molecular, and Chemical Biology, at Tufts since 2000, including 13 years of service as department chair of Anatomy and Cellular Biology at the School of Medicine. He holds the George A. Bates Professorship in Histology at the School of Medicine.

Schwob’s research focuses on the mechanisms that regulate neural development. The Schwob lab in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences uses the peripheral olfactory system—that is, how we smell—to model fundamental developmental processes, including the controlled generation of neurons.

The Schwob lab focuses on the peripheral olfactory system as an ideal model for neuroregeneration; the tissue, constantly exposed to environmental injury, retain a lifelong ability to give birth to new neurons and regenerate after injury, offering unique insights into neural development and repair.

Schwob’s research discoveries underpin a transformative therapeutic approach for the treatment of age-related olfactory loss (a disorder known as presbyosmia). To advance the commercialization of these discoveries, Schwob co-founded a startup company where he serves as a scientific advisor. The company secured over $8 million in venture capital financing and is developing pioneering therapies for patients with age-related olfactory loss. Schwob is the lead inventor on a Tufts patent that covers targeting the p63 protein to reactivate dormant reserve stem cells in the olfactory epithelium as a treatment for olfactory loss; this patent is licensed to the startup company.

“With his research in the olfactory system, Jim Schwob has revealed the promise that lies within some of the most exceptional examples of neuronal diversity and synaptic specificity,” said Bernard Arulanandam, vice provost for research at Tufts and an NAI fellow. “Tufts is deeply proud of the achievements Jim has had across his career, including this latest recognition by the National Academy of Inventors, and we eagerly await the exploitation of his deeper understanding of olfactory stem cells for therapeutic use.”

Schwob and other fellows will be honored at the NAI annual meeting next June in Los Angeles.

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