Keynote speaker Emmanuelle Charpentier is the recently awarded 2020 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry along Jennifer Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing”. Emmanuelle is a French microbiologist, geneticist and biochemist. She received her education in Paris (France) and pursued a scientific career in academic research institutions in Paris, New York and Memphis (United States), Vienna (Austria), Umeå (Sweden) and Braunschweig (Germany). Emmanuelle is now based in Berlin (Germany).

Emmanuelle has focused most of her scientific career on the understanding of fundamental mechanisms of diseases with a particular focus on infections caused by Gram-positive bacterial pathogens such as Listeria, staphylococci and streptococci.

Emmanuelle is mainly recognised for her and her lab’s research on the CRISPR-Cas9 adaptive immune system in the human pathogen Streptococcus pyogenes and other bacterial species that has laid the foundation for the development of a novel, highly versatile and specific genome editing and engineering technology. The so-called CRISPR-Cas technology is revolutionizing life sciences research. CRISPR-Cas has opened whole new opportunities in biotechnologies and in biomedical gene therapies that are impacting society and humanity. The field of CRISPR-Cas biology and engineering continues to develop at dazzling speed, with exciting new developments still emerging almost weekly.

For her and her team’s contributions to the so-called CRISPR-Cas9 discovery, speaker Emmanuelle Charpentier has received numerous honors, decorations, prizes, awards and honorary doctorate degrees from Europe, Asia and North America. She is elected member of national and international scientific academies.

Emmanuelle is inventor and co-owner of the fundamental intellectual property comprising the CRISPR-Cas9 technology. Together with Rodger Novak and Shaun Foy, she co-founded CRISPR Therapeutics and ERS Genomics with the aim to develop the CRISPR-Cas genome engineering technology for biotechnological and biomedical applications.