[4][7][8][9] In 2011, he was announced as the editor of eLife, a new high-profile open-access journal published by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust launching in 2012.

[11] Schekman shared the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with James Rothman and Thomas C. Südhof for their ground-breaking work on cell membrane vesicle trafficking.

The Schekman Lab at that university carries out research into molecular descriptions of the process of membrane assembly and vesicular traffic[20] in eukaryotic cells[21][22] including yeast.

[24] In 2002, Schekman received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research[25] and Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia University along with James Rothman for their discovery of cellular membrane trafficking, a process that cells use to organize their activities and communicate with their environment.

Schekman serves as a member of the Selection Committee and then as chair of Life Science and Medicine which chooses winners of the Shaw Prize.

The Sec proteins are strikingly conserved and the trafficking mechanisms that Schekman discovered are at the heart of neurotransmission, hormone secretion, cholesterol homeostasis and metabolic regulation.

[1]Schekman, Thomas C. Südhof, and James Rothman were awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells".

[33] Schekman has said the prestige and difficulty of publishing in these journals sometimes cause scientists to cut corners or pursue trends, rather than conduct research on important questions.

Near the end of this difficult period Schekman was enlisted to serve as the scientific director of a new effort called ASAP aimed at organizing an international program of collaborative research on the origins and mechanisms of progression of Parkinson's Disease.