Emmanuelle Charpentier, PhD, is a French professor and researcher in microbiology, genetics, and biochemistry. She earned her PhD from the Institut Pasteur in 1995, researching molecular mechanisms involved in antibiotic resistance. She moved to the US in 1996 and stayed for five years, working at several institutes, including Rockefeller University, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. In 2002 Charpentier returned to Europe. In 2011, Charpentier met Jennifer Doudna at a research conference and they began a collaboration. Together they developed the CRISPR-Cas9 system as a simple gene-editing tool. This discovery reduces the time and work needed to edit genomic DNA. In 2020, Doudna and Charpentier were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery.
