Emmanuelle Charpentier becomes honorary citizen of Umeå, Sweden

Nobel laureate Emmanuelle Charpentier, professor at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin and visiting professor at Umeå University, becomes an honorary citizen of Umeå municipality. She is awarded for the luminosity that her ground-breaking and multi-awarded research has brought to Umeå University and Umeå.

“It feels very honourable to be made an honorary citizen of Umeå municipality. I came here on a cold winter's day with a hypothesis and a research idea. Here I got a department management that believed in me, a laboratory with good resources and a city that had everything I could need to live a good life and conduct my research. Here I had the opportunity to realize and develop what would result in a Nobel Prize after only a few years. Umeå is a hospitable city that will forever be in my heart, says Emmanuelle Charpentier”.

An honorary citizen of Umeå can be appointed to a person who, without being a resident of Umeå, actively contributed to Umeå's development, in word and deed showed the city their love or otherwise made Umeå known and respected.

The presidium of the municipal council writes in its justification:

Emmanuelle Charpentier has made a scientific discovery that has created worldwide attention. Her work has in a unique way increased the visibility of the in many parts world-leading research at Umeå University. It will attract people to the university and to the city of Umeå for the foreseeable future. In her interviews, she has also talked about Umeå as a place that gave her time, good living conditions and resources, which made it possible to devote herself wholeheartedly to her research.

Emmanuelle Charpentier is also an important source of inspiration for young people in Umeå and not least for young women. Before she and Jennifer Doudna were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the prize had previously only been awarded to five women. Emmanuelle Charpentier has shown that it is possible regardless of gender, with scientific brilliance, to take a place in the academic world and in the highly competitive and male-dominated scientific research. The commitment to young people is also reflected in the opportunity she has to offer young researchers places as postdocs in research groups within Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden, MIMS, at Umeå University.

“It is difficult to fully understand and appreciate the discovery that Emmanuelle Charpentier has made at Umeå University, but we know that it will be of great importance, not least when it comes to the development of new forms of medical treatment and when it comes to research connected to crops. Emmanuelle Charpentier is a source of inspiration for the young people in Umeå and is herself proof of the innovative power that exists here. In Umeå there are all the possibilities, says Marie-Louise Rönnmark, Mayor in Umeå Municipality”.

“Added to this is everything she has told in interviews about Umeå University, about the good life in Umeå and the opportunities the city has given her. It has made an impression both in Sweden and internationally in a way we have never experienced before. We are extremely grateful for her efforts and they are the reason why we are now awarding her the title of honorary citizen, says Marie-Louise Rönnmark”.

About Emmanuelle Charpentier

In 2009, Emmanuelle Charpentier was recruited to Umeå University as a research leader at the Department of Molecular Biology and MIMS. In 2012, she published the first article about her discovery in the respected scientific journal Science. Since 2015, she is head of a research department at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin. Through a donation from the Kempestiftelserna and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, she was awarded the Emmanuelle Charpenter EC Jubilee Prize at Umeå University in the same year, which gives her the opportunity to offer young researchers a postdoctoral position in research groups within Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden, MIMS, at Umeå University.

Since 2016, she has been an associate honorary professor at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In 2017, she was promoted to honorary doctorate at Umeå University. In 2018, she founded and became director of the independent institute Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, also in Berlin.

More information:
Marie-Louise Rönnmark (S)
Mayor
Umeå Municipality
+46 70-655 64 84
marie-louise.ronnmark@umea.se