Emmanuelle Charpentier

Prof. Emmanuelle Charpentier studied biochemistry, microbiology and genetics at the University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, and obtained her PhD in Microbiology for her research performed at the Pasteur Institute. She then continued her work in the U.S., at The Rockefeller University, University Langone Medical Center and the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine (all in New York, NY) and at St Jude Children's Research Hospital (in Memphis, TN). E. Charpentier returned to Europe to establish her own research group as Assistant and Associate Professor at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories of the University of Vienna where she habilitated in the field of Microbiology. She was then appointed Associate Professor at the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS, part of Nordic European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Partnership for Molecular Medicine) at Umeå University in Sweden where she habilitated in the field of Medical Microbiology and is still active as a Visiting Professor. Between 2013 and 2015, she was Head of the Department of Regulation in Infection Biology at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Braunschweig, and Professor at the Medical School of Hannover in Germany. In 2013, she was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship, which she has held since 2014. In 2015, E. Charpentier was appointed Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society in Germany and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, Germany. Since 2016, E. Charpentier is Honorary Professor at Humboldt University. E. Charpentier is recognized as a world-leading expert in regulatory mechanisms underlying processes of infection and immunity in bacterial pathogens. With her recent groundbreaking findings in the field of RNA-mediated regulation based on the CRISPR-Cas9 system, E. Charpentier has laid the foundation for the development of a novel, highly versatile and specific genome editing technology that is revolutionizing life sciences research and could open up whole new opportunities in biomedical gene therapies. E. Charpentier has been awarded prestigious prizes and honors, among them the 2016 Leibniz Prize, 2016 Canada Gairdner International Award, the Otto Warburg Medal 2016, the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award 2016, and many more.