Asifa Akhtar, PhD, is the Director of the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics (MPI-IE) in Freiburg, Germany, where she also leads the Department of Chromatin Regulation. In July 2020, she was elected Vice President of the Max Planck Society, Germany’s premier research organization dedicated to basic research. She is the first international female Vice President and the first female Vice President in the Biology and Medicine Section of the Society.

Born in Pakistan, she studied in the UK and continued her scientific career in Germany. She is an expert in epigenetics and chromatin regulation. Research in her laboratory focuses on the study of a biological process called “dosage compensation,” a mechanism that ensures the proper balance of sex chromosome gene expression in the two sexes, a key aspect of an organism’s development.

In 2021, she received the Leibniz Prize, the most prestigious research award given in Germany. She was elected as a member of EMBO in 2013 and of the National Academy of Science Leopoldina in 2019. She is the winner of the 2024 FEBS/EMBO Women in Science Award.