Wendy Bickmore


Professor Wendy Anne Bickmore is a British genome biologist, Director of the MRC Human Genetics Unit at the University of Edinburgh and President of The Genetics Society since 2015.

Early life and education

Bickmore was born at Shoreham-by-Sea on 28 July 1961 to Beryl and Keith Bickmore. She was educated at Chichester High School For Girls and obtained an undergraduate Bachelor of Arts degree in biochemistry from the University of Oxford and her PhD from the University of Edinburgh for research analysing nucleic acid sequences from the Y chromosome of humans supervised by Howard Cooke and Adrian Bird.

Research and career

Her work has focussed on how DNA, chromosomes and specific genes are organised and packaged in the cell nucleus, how this process is regulated during development to facilitate the expression of genes, and how aberrant genome organisation is linked to disease. She is a member of the Editorial Board for Genes & Development.

Awards and honours

Bickmore was awarded EMBO Membership in 2001, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2005 and elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2005. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2017.