Susan Gasser

Susan Gasser has served as the Director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel since 2004, where she also holds a chair in molecular biology.

Susan studied biophysics at the University of Chicago, completed her PhD at the University of Basel in biochemistry and then moved to the University of Geneva for postdoctoral work. Joining the Swiss Institute for Experimental Research in Cancer in Lausanne in 1986, she has identified mechanisms that organize chromatin in the yeast nucleus to ensure transcriptional silencing and genome stability.

At the FMI, she extends this to C. elegans. Dr Gasser held a professorship at the University of Geneva from 2001-04, prior to her return to Basel, and served on a number of boards and advisory councils throughout Europe, including the Swiss National Research Council, the EC Presidents Science and Technology Advisory Council, and the EMBO Council, which she chaired. Among other distinctions, she received the Otto Nägeli Prize in 2006, the International INSERM award in 2011, the FEBS/EMBO Women in Science award in 2012 and the Weizmann Institute Women in Science Award in 2013.