Susan M. Gasser
Susan M. Gasser (born 1955) is a Swiss molecular biologist. She was the Director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland, from 2004 - 2019, where she also led a research group from 2004 until the end of 2020. She was in parallel Professor of molecular biology at the University of Basel until April 2021. Since January 2021, Susan Gasser is Director of the ISREC Foundation, based in Lausanne, and is Professor invité at the University of Lausanne in the Department of Fundamental Microbiology. She is an expert in quantitative biology and studies epigenetic  inheritance and genome stability. Early career. Susan Gasser received her doctorate from the University of Basel in Biochemistry in 1982 for the development of an in vitro system for the import of mitochondrial proteins with Gottfried (Jeff) Schatz in the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, after having completing a BA at the University of Chicago with a Honors thesis in Biophysics with Marvin Makinen (1979). She studied the long-range folding of the genome in flies and human cells as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Geneva with Ulrich K. Laemmli, with whom she established roles for  topoisomerase II in metaphase chromosome structure (Gasser et al., JMB 1986) and for A/T-rich sequences in long-range chromatin folding (Gasser and Laemmli, Cell 1986). Career. From 1986 to 2001, Gasser led a research group at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research in Epalinges sur Lausanne. From 2001 to 2004, she was a professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Geneva. Susan Gasser moved in 2004 to be Director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, where she led a research group until the end of 2020. From 2005 - 2021 she was full  professor at the University of Basel, and since February 2021, she is the Director of the ISREC Foundation, which is responsible for the new Agora institute of translational cancer research. Susan Gasser also holds the position of Guest professor at the University of Lausanne and at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Initially studying long range chromatin organization in budding yeast, she showed that yeast telomeres form clusters at the nuclear envelope, which contribute to heritable gene repression and chromosomal end maintenance. The laboratory combined genetic, biochemical and fluorescence microscopy approaches, and developed quantitative live imaging tools to study the subnuclear  dynamics of DNA loci in living cells. High resolution fluorescent time-lapse microscopy revealed ATP dependent dynamics of telomeres and of single loci, which are modulated by histone density. Her work elucidated roles of histone modifications in genome stability and in the spatial organization of chromatin in the interphase nucleus, recently focusing on the function of subnuclear compartments of heterochromatin in C. elegans development and tissue differentiation. Gasser has served on review boards and advisory councils throughout Switzerland and Europe. and is currently Chair of the Strategy Board of the Helmholtz Society Health Program of Germany, and serves on the  ETH Board (Rat der Eidgenossosichen Technischen Hochschulen) and the Swiss Science Council. She participates in numerous institutional review boards and advisory committees in Switzerland, across Europe and in Japan, and serves on the Gairdner Foundation Medical Prize committee. From 2000 to 2004 she was vice chairperson and then Chairperson of the EMBO Council and a member of the President's Science and Technology Advisory Council (PSTAC) for the European Commission. Susan led the Gender Committee of the Swiss National Science Foundation from 2014- 2019, and initiated the PRIMA program for the promotion of women in academia, actively promoting the careers  of women scientists in Europe and Japan. Susan Gasser was elected to the Académie de France, Leopoldina, EMBO, AAAS, the Swiss Science Council as well as the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, and received the INSERM International Prize in 2011, the FEBS | EMBO Women in Science Award in 2012, the Weizmann Institute Women in Science award in 2013, and honorary doctorates from the University of Lausanne and the Charles University in Prague. In Switzerland she was the recipient of the Friedrich Miescher Award, the National Latsis Prize, and the Otto Naegeli Award for the promotion of medical research. Susan