Robin Lovell-Badge

Robin Lovell-Badge is a senior group leader and head of the Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics at the Francis Crick Institute.

In 1990, his lab discovered Sry, the Y-linked sex determining gene, as well as the first members of the Sox gene family. Major themes of his current work include sex determination, development of the nervous system and pituitary, and the biology of stem cells within the early embryo, the CNS and the pituitary. He is also very active in both public engagement and policy work. With respect to human genome editing: He is a member of the Hinxton Group steering committee, which organised the first international meeting on the topic in 2015. He was on the organising committee for both International Summits on Human Gene Editing, and he was a member of the National Academies of Sciences “Study Committee”.

He is a member of EMBO (1993), a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (1999), a fellow of the Royal Society (2001). He has received the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine (1995), the Amory Prize (Awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences) (1996), the Feldberg Foundation Prize (2008), and the Waddington Medal of the British Society for Developmental Biology (2010). He is also an honorary professor at University College, London and a Special Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong. He was awarded a CBE in the 2018 New Year’s Honours List. 

Declaration of interests

Is a member of the UK’s Human fertilization and Embryology Authority’s Scientific and Clinical Advances advisory committee that has an interest in this area and for which he receives a per diem. He has also reviewed reports and been involved on committees that have deliberated on this topic for which he has received travel expenses.