Prof. Susan M. Gasser is the director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, a position she assumed in 2004. In addition, she was appointed to a professorship at the University of Basel. Her research activities are pursued at the Friedrich Miescher Institute.

Prior to her present position, Dr. Gasser was a Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Geneva. For the preceding 15 years she had led a research group at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research.

Dr. Gasser's research interests focus on how nuclear organization impinges on mechanisms of repair and replication fork stability and on epigenetic inheritance of cell fate decisions. Her laboratory combines genome-wide mapping, synthetic lethal screens, quantitative live fluorescence imaging, biochemical reconstitution and standard yeast molecular genetics to address these questions at the molecular and cellular levels. In questions of stem cell determination and epigenetic inheritance, the Gasser group works with C. elegans, to study the
effects of nuclear organization on gene expression during well-characterized cell differentiation events. She has authored more than 200 primary articles and reviews over the last 30 years and has received a number of prizes for her work. Susan M. Gasser studied at the University of Chicago (B.A. Honors in Biophysics) and at the University of Basel (PhD in Biochemistry). She did her postdoctoral studies with U.K. Laemmli at the University of Geneva. She has served on numerous review boards and advisory councils throughout Switzerland and Europe, and served for 3 years as chair of the EMBO Council.