Edith Heard (born 1965)[1] FRS MAE[2] is a British-French researcher in epigenetics who has been serving as the Director General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) since January 2019.

[13][14] In 2000, Heard spent a year as a visiting scientist in David Spector’s group at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory[15] where she discovered some of the early chromatin changes in the X-inactivation process.

Heard has also performed pioneering work revealing that in addition to epigenetic modifications, chromosome organization and nuclear compartmentalization are important players in the initiation and maintenance of X inactivation.

[2][19] Thanks to their studies on the X-inactivation centre, the Heard group also revealed the existence of Topologically Associating Domains (TADs) in collaboration with Job Dekker.

[20] Heard has been a professor at the Collège de France, holding the Chair of Epigenetics and Cellular Memory, and from 2010 to 2018 she was director of the Genetics and Developmental Biology department at the Institut Curie in Paris.

[27] In 2023, Heard chaired the selection committee that chose Yasmine Belkaid to succeed Stewart Cole as director of the Institut Pasteur.

[2] Her nomination reads: Heard has made several groundbreaking discoveries in epigenetics, through her studies on X-chromosome inactivation, the process of dosage compensation in mammals.

Heard has also performed pioneering work revealing that in addition to epigenetic modifications, chromosome organization and nuclear compartmentalization are important players in the initiation and maintenance of X inactivation.

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