Prof. Sir Martin Evans Cardiff School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, UK

Prof. Sir Martin Evans is a key pioneer in the field of stem cell biology, having been the first to isolate murine embryonic stem cells. He received the 2007 Nobel Prize for Medicine with Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies, for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in... read moremice by the use embryonic stem cells. He is the Director of the School of Biosciences and Professor of Mammalian Genetics at Cardiff University, a Fellow of the Royal Society and a founder Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. His work on embryonic stem cells now forms the basics of all mouse knockout and targeted genetic manipulation. Since pioneering these fundamental developments which created new routes to experimental mammalian genetics and hence functional genomics, Sir Martin's team has been exploiting them using gene knockout and gene trap methods, both for novel discovery and to create animal models of human disease.