Jennifer Doudna

Contributions and Distinctions

Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the development of CRISPR-Cas9 as a tool for genome editing. She is the first female professor at UC Berkeley to receive a Nobel prize.

Biographical Sketch  

Dr. Jennifer A. Doudna (1964-present) serves as the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences and is a professor in the Departments of Chemistry and of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. Working alongside Emmanuelle Charpentier, Doudna’s groundbreaking development of CRISPR-Cas9 as a genome engineering technology earned the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and revolutionized human and agricultural genomics research. In 2015, Doudna founded the Innovative Genomics Institute, and has also founded many other companies that utilize her CRISPR technologies. She holds more than 100 U.S. patents. Doudna is a member of many esteemed medical and science organizations and is engaged in public discourse on the ethical implication of genome engineering. She has earned multiple other honors, biomedical and otherwise, including TIME’s “100 Most Influential People” in 2015 and a runner-up for “Person of the Year” in 2016. She co-authored “A Crack in Creation,” a personal account of her research as well as the societal and ethical considerations of gene editing.