Dr Emmanuelle Charpentier is a professor at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research and Hannover Medical School, Germany and the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine at Umeå University, Sweden. Her seminal research unveiled the key mechanisms of the CRISPR-Cas9 system, laying the foundation for the use of CRISPR-Cas9 as a highly versatile and precise gene editing tool.Emmanuelle studied biochemistry and microbiology at the University Pierre-and-Marie-Curie in Paris, France where she received her PhD in microbiology for her research performed at the Pasteur Institute. 

She spent five years working in the US, 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.Before taking up her current positions, Emmanuelle was heading a microbiology research group at the Max F Perutz Laboratories at the University of Vienna in Austria. In 2013, Emmanuelle received the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt professorship, an international award for research in Germany.Emmanuelle Charpentier receives Ernst Jung Award for Medicine in 2015.