Edith Heard
Edith Heard heads the Institut Curie's Genetics and Developmental Biology Unit and the Mammalian Epigenesis and Development team at the College de France. She also leads the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), an intergovernmental research organization involving 29 countries and sits on several scientific boards, including the WHO Scientific Council.
As an epigeneticist, her work has shed light on the initial events that accompany X chromosome inactivation during embryogenesis. Her team has highlighted the remarkable dynamics of epigenetic changes during early development and elucidated some of the mechanisms responsible for the X inactivation process. She has also demonstrated the diversity of strategies implemented in this process between even very closely related mammals in the course of evolution.
She has received numerous awards for her research work, including the CNRS Silver Medal in 2008, the Prix Jean Hamburger from the City of Paris in 2009, the ERC Advanced Investigator Award from the European Research Council in 2010 and the FRM Grand Prix in 2011. She has also been an elected member of the prestigious European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) since 2005. In 2012, she was appointed Professor at the Collège de France. She was also awarded the Inserm Grand Prix in 2017. Heard became Executive Director of EMBL in 2019.