On 15 January we were delighted to welcome Professor Edith Heard to the Academy to give the 2017 Sackler Lecture as part of our #MedSciLife programme which aims to share the life experience of those working in biomedical research, celebrate diversity and provide advice and support to biomedical researchers at all stages of their careers.
As well as outlining her science, Edith’s talk included insight on her inspirations as well as exploring her career path to date and the opportunities and challenges she has met along the way - reflecting on the experience both inside and outside the lab which has benefited her work and shaped the researcher she is today.
After the lecture, an audience of guests comprising Fellows and Academy grant awardees enjoyed the opportunity of informal discussion with Edith over lunch, making connections and sharing their own experience of life working in the field of medical science.
About the speaker:
Edith Heard is Chair of Epigenetics and Cellular Memory at the College de France and Director of Genetics and Development Biology at the Institut Curie. She graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1986, specialising in genetics, before completing a PhD on gene amplification mechanisms in cancer at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund> She moved to the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1990, where she began her work on the epigenetic process of X-chromosome inactivation. In 2001 she established her lab at the Institut Curie in Paris, where she currently directs the Genetics and Developmental Biology Department. Edith’s work focuses on epigenetic processes in mammals, with a particular interest in the role of non-coding RNAs, chromatin structure and nuclear organisation in the establishment and maintenance of differential expression patterns during development and in disease.
Edith Heard has been elected as EMBL's next Director General, taking office early next year.