EMBL Director General Edith Heard receives 2025 Royal Society Croonian Medal
Award recognises sustained, outstanding achievements in biological sciences
EMBL Director General Edith Heard.
The Royal Society has announced that EMBL Director General Heard will receive its 2025 prestigious Croonian Medal and Lecture.
The Croonian Medal and Lecture is the Royal Society’s premier lecture in the biological sciences. Started in 1738, the lectureship was conceived by William Croone FRS (PDF), one of the original Fellows of the Society, with the idea that the medal and lectureship should recognise senior scientists who have made sustained, outstanding achievements in biological sciences.
Heard’s research has explored epigenetic processes in mammals, particularly the process of X-chromosome inactivation, whereby one of the two X chromosomes is silenced during female development, enabling sex chromosome dosage compensation. Her group uncovered remarkable epigenetic dynamics of X inactivation and ultimately provided a molecular understanding of the process and deciphering some key factors underpinning X-chromosome inactivation.
At EMBL, Heard has spearheaded a new scientific programme ‘Molecules to Ecosystems’ that seeks to explore the molecular basis of life in natural contexts. She is also a co-founder of PAUSE, a French program that helps to host scientists in exile.
