Emmanuelle Charpentier

Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier is Founding, Scientific and Managing Director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens and Honorary Professor at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. Prior to her current appointments, Emmanuelle held an Alexander von Humboldt professorship at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig, where she headed the Department of Regulation in Infection Biology, and was a Professor at Hannover Medical School, Germany. For many years, she led research groups at the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden at Umeå University in Sweden and at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories at the University of Vienna in Austria. Her seminal research unveiled the key mechanisms of the CRISPR-Cas9 technology, laying the foundation for the use of CRISPR-Cas9 as a highly versatile and precise gene editing tool.

Emmanuelle studied biochemistry, microbiology and genetics at the University Pierre-and-Marie-Curie in Paris, France where she received her Ph.D. in microbiology for her research performed at the Pasteur Institute. She spent several years working in the U.S., where she held research associate positions at the Rockefeller University, New York University Langone Medical Center, the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Emmanuelle’s work has been recognized by numerous awards including the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience, the Japan Prize, the Carus Medal awarded by the Leopoldina German Academy of Sciences, the Gruber Prize in Genetics, the Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine, the Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine, the Göran Gustafsson Prize awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Le Prix Jean-Pierre Lecocq from the French Academy of Sciences, the L’Oréal Unesco for Women in Science Award 2016, the 2015 Otto Warburg Medal, the Umeå University EC Jubilee Award 2015 (named for her) and the 2015 Hansen Family Award. Emmanuelle was also recognized by TIME as one of The Most Influential People in 2015.