Prof. Emmanuelle Charpentier, a distinguished French microbiologist, biochemist, and geneticist, as well as 2020 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, was awarded an honorary doctorate (doctor honoris causa) by Wrocław Tech. The title was presented during the solemn inauguration of the new academic year.

The honor bestowed upon the researcher is an expression of recognition for her outstanding contributions to global science in the fields of biochemistry and genetics.

In particular, her research into the mechanisms regulating RNA function in bacteria was acknowledged—work upon which Prof. Charpentier developed the groundbreaking, Nobel Prize-winning concept of the CRISPR-Cas9 system as a universal genome editing tool. Furthermore, she was recognized for her close collaboration with the scientific community at Wrocław University of Science and Technology.

“It is a great honor for me to receive this distinction during the official opening of the new academic year at Wrocław University of Science and Technology. Wrocław is known for its history; it is a city of meetings and culture. It is also the finest illustration of how knowledge, education, and science build society and ensure a better future for it. Thank you very much, and I wish good luck to the students, especially those starting their university journey today,” said Prof. Charpentier.

The supervisor (promotor) of the honorary doctorate was Prof. Krystyna Dąbrowska from the Faculty of Medicine.

During the ceremony, Prof. Charpentier also delivered a lecture titled “From curiosity to CRISPR: lessons from a scientific journey,” in which she presented the history of her research.

Profile of Prof. Emmanuelle Charpentier

Prof.

Emmanuelle Charpentier is a French microbiologist, geneticist, and biochemist. She studied at Pierre and Marie Curie University (later incorporated into Sorbonne University), where she earned her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry in 1992. She completed her doctoral studies at the Pasteur Institute, studying mobile bacterial DNA fragments that move within the genome and transfer drug resistance between cells. In 1995, she obtained her PhD in microbiology and remained at the Pasteur Institute for another year working as a postdoctoral researcher.

She continued her postdoctoral research at Rockefeller University in New York. After working as a research assistant at New York University Medical Center, she became a research scientist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, and subsequently at the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine in New York.

In 2002, she returned to Europe to take up a research position at the University of Vienna. There, she discovered a regulatory RNA molecule that controls virulence factors in the bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes. With the help of molecular microbiologist Jörg Vogel from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, she identified new small RNA molecules in the S. pyogenes genome and began investigating the bacteria's CRISPR system, which the organism uses to defend against viruses. She discovered that the CRISPR system in S. pyogenes consists of three components: tracrRNA (trans-activating CRISPR RNA), CRISPR RNA, and the Cas9 protein.

For her and her team's contribution to the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9, she has received numerous honors, distinctions, awards, and honorary doctorates across Europe, Asia, and North America. For this discovery, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020 alongside Jennifer A. Doudna.

She is the founder, scientific and managing director, and head of administration at the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, as well as an honorary professor at Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany).