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. In 2015 she received the Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research.