Professor Robin Lovell-Badge

Robin Lovell-Badge obtained his PhD at University College London in 1978 and was a postdoc in Cambridge, both with Martin Evans. After an EMBO fellowship in Paris he established his independent laboratory in 1982 at the MRC Mammalian Development Unit, UCL, directed by Anne McLaren. In 1988 he moved to the MRC National Institute for Medical Research, becoming Head of the Division of Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics in 1993. The NIMR was incorporated into the Francis Crick Institute in April 2015. In 1990, his lab discovered Sry, the Y-linked sex determining gene and the first members of the Sox gene family. He has had long-standing interests in the biology of stem cells, in how genes work in the context of embryo development, and how decisions of cell fate are made. Major themes of his current work include sex determination, development of the nervous system and pituitary, and the biology of stem cells within these systems. He is also very active in both public engagement and policy work, notably around stem cells, genetics, human embryo and animal research, and in ways science is regulated and disseminated. He was elected a member of EMBO (1993), a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (1999), the Royal Society (2001), the Royal Society of Biology (2011), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2018). He has received the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine (1995), the Amory Prize (1996), the Feldberg Foundation Prize (2008), the Waddington Medal of the British Society for Developmental Biology (2010), the ISSCR Public Service Award (2021), and the Genetics Society Medal (2022). He was awarded a CBE in the 2018 New Year’s Honours List. He is an honorary professor at University College, London and at King’s College, London, and a Special Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong.