American biochemist who, together with Emmanuelle Charpentier, invented CRISPR gene-editing technology in 2012. The two won the Nobel prize in chemistry in 2020 for the work. She is based at the University of California, Berkeley.
On January 9th 2026 she launched Aurora Therapeutics, a firm that uses gene-editing to treat ultra-rare genetic disorders—building on Britain's new regulatory framework for process-approved custom drugs.
She also co-founded Scribe Therapeutics, an epigenetic-editing firm in Alameda, California, whose ELXR platform uses a smaller, nimbler enzyme called CasX rather than the Cas9 of standard CRISPR.
People who think they know everything greatly annoy those of us who do.