Fiona Watt, PhD, is a world leader in stem cell research and regenerative medicine. Since January 2022, she is Director of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and a group leader at EMBL Heidelberg. EMBO is the European intergovernmental organisation comprising more than 1800 leading life science researchers, including 90 Nobel Prize winners.

She has been director of the Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at King’s College London, UK, from 2012 to 2022 and was on secondment as executive chair of the Medical Research Council from 2018 to 2022.

She made fundamental discoveries about the genes and mechanisms controlling self-renewal and differentiation of skin stem cells. She is an elected member of EMBO, the Academia Europaea and the US National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the UK Royal Society (FRS) and Academy of Medical Sciences. In 2016, she received the FEBS | EMBO Women in Science Award.