Edith Heard
Dr. Edith Heard is a biologist, geneticist, and the Director General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. She is also a professor at the College de France and Chair of the Epigenetics and Cellular Memory. She completed her undergraduate studies in genetics at the University of Cambridge in 1986 and received her PhD from Imperial College London while researching at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in 1990. During her post-doctoral work, she investigated the epigenetics of X-chromosome inactivation.
In 1986, Dr. Heard received her Bachelor of the Arts degree in Natural Sciences (Genetics) from the University of Cambridge. In 1990, she was awarded her PhD from Imperial College London for her research at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, which investigated gene amplification in rat cells. She carried out her post-doctoral research at the Pasteur Institute and joined the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
Dr. Heard established her own laboratory at the Institut Curie in 2001 and became the director of its Unit of Genetics and Developmental Biology Department in 2010. In 2016, Dr. Heard was involved in configuring a high-level sponsorship committee for the Government of France, an effort to support scientists affected by war or emergency situations. In 2019, she became a professor at the Collège de France. In the same year, she moved her lab to and became Director General for the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. Under her direction, the laboratory has launched a new program called “Molecules to Ecosystems” to study molecular biology. The program aims to bridge the gap between multiple disciplines ranging from ecology, epidemiology, toxicology, engineering, and many more.
Dr. Heard has received numerous awards including the CNRS Silver Medal in 2008, Fellow of the Royal Society in 2013, the Hansen Family Award in 2019, the L’Oréal-UNESCO prize for Women in Science International Award in 2020, the CNRS Gold Medal in 2024, and the Croonian Medal and Lecture in 2025.