Wendy Bickmore

Biosketch

Wendy Bickmore CBE FRS FMedSci FRSE is Director of the MRC Human Genetics Unit, Institute of Genetics and Cancer, at the University of Edinburgh. Following an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in molecular biology at the University of Edinburgh, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the MRC Clinical and Population Cytogenetics Unit in Edinburgh. Wendy started her independent research group as a fellow of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, going on to then become a tenured group leader at the MRC Human Genetics Unit and was appointed as the Unit’s Director in 2015. Wendy was president of the Genetics Society of Great Britain from 2015 to 2018 and led its centennial celebrations. She is an EMBO member, and fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences. She was awarded a CBE in the 2021 Queen’s New Year Honour List for services to science and to women in science.

Research Interests

Prof. Bickmore is fascinated by the three-dimensional organization of the human genome on chromosomes and in cells and how that influences genome function in health and disease. She discovered that human chromosomes are non-uniformly organized in the nucleus of our cells and, by re-engineering 3D genome organisation and synthetically controlling transcription of individual genes, she has explored the causal role of genome and chromatin organisation in gene activation and repression. Her current research explores how the non-coding genome regulates gene expression, in particular how 3D chromosome organisation allows distant enhancers to communicate with their target gene promoters and the role of protein complexes in shaping genome and chromatin organisation.