The 2018 Croonian Medal and Lecture is awarded to Professor Jennifer Doudna ForMemRS for her outstanding structural and functional studies of RNA and ribonucleoprotiens and for elucidating the molecular mechanism of the CRISPR-Cas9 system and developing it for genetic engineering.
Professor Doudna will be presented with a medal and a gift of £10000 at the Premier Awards dinner in autumn 2017. The associated prize lecture will be delivered in 2018.
Jennifer Doudna grew up in rural Hawaii, where she first became interested in the chemistry of living systems.
Dr Doudna is currently the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Professor Doudna’s research seeks to understand how RNA molecules control the expression of genetic information. Early in her career, Dr Doudna’s lab determined some of the first crystal structures of RNA and RNA-protein complexes, providing unprecedented insights into molecular function of non-protein-coding RNAs.
More recently she and collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier determined the mechanism of RNA-guided bacterial adaptive immunity by the CRISPR-Cas9 system, enabling them to harness this system for efficient genome engineering in animals and plants.
CRISPR-Cas9 is a transformative technology that is revolutionising the fields of genetics, molecular biology and medicine. Dr Doudna is a recipient of numerous awards and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Inventors.
The lectureship was conceived by William Croone FRS, one of the original Fellows of the Society. Among the papers left on his death in 1684 were plans to endow two lectureships, one at the Royal Society and the other at the Royal College of Physicians. His widow later bequeathed the means to carry out the scheme. The lecture series began in 1738.
