Pope names Nobel laureate as member of Pontifical Academy of Sciences

By Vatican News staff writer

Pope Francis has appointed Professor Emmanuelle Marie Charpentier, founder and director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin, Germany, as the newest ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Prof Charpentier is also the recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Curriculum vitae

Born on December 11, 1968 in Juvisy-sur-Orge, France, Charpentier specialized in Biology, Microbiology, Biochemistry and Genetics at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.

She is the founding director, and scientific and administrative director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germany, and an honorary professor of Microbiology at the Institut für Biologie of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She has also taught at Umeå University, Sweden.

In 2020, Professor Charpentier, along with American biochemist Jennifer Anne Doudna, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of the CRISPR/Cas9 method of genome editing.