Edith Heard, Ph.D., is the Director General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) since 2019. EMBL is Europe’s life sciences laboratory with more than 110 research groups dedicated to molecular biology, supported by 28 member states. Her lab is based at the EMBL headquarters in Heidelberg. She is a full professor at the Collège de France and holds the Chair of Epigenetics and Cellular Memory in Paris, France. She has been appointed the new Director and Chief Executive of the Francis Crick Institute in London starting in the summer of 2025.

A British geneticist, her discoveries in the field of epigenetics and her creativity in understanding how genes work have earned her the title of Science Visionary from the New York Times and the international l’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science 2020 award. She is an elected member of the Royal Society in the UK and the US National Academy of Sciences. In April 2021 she joined the Scientific Council of the World Health Organisation. 

She was awarded the 2024 CNRS Gold Medal, one of France’s most prestigious scientific awards, for her exceptional contributions to the advancement of her discipline, epigenetics, particularly on the inactivation of the X chromosome.