Julie Ahringer’s biography, net worth, fact, career, awards and life story

Julie Ann Ahringer FMedSci is a Professor of Genetics and Genomics, and a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow at the Gurdon Institute and the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge. She leads a research lab investigating the control of gene expression.

Education

Ahringer was educated at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry in 1984. She completed her PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison while working with Judith Kimble. She carried out postdoctoral research at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge with John Graham White.

Research

Ahringer became a group leader in the Department of Genetics in Cambridge in 1996, then moved to the Gurdon Institute in 1998. Her laboratory carried out the first systematic inactivation of the majority of genes in any animal by constructing and screening a genome-wide RNAi library for Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). Ahringer’s current research group studies the regulation of chromatin structure and function in gene expression and genome organization using the nematode C. elegans as a model to understand development and disease. The Ahringer Lab research is funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Honours and awards

Ahringer was elected to the EMBO Membership in 2003 and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2007. She delivered the Francis Crick lecture prize of the Royal Society in 2004. She is the member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Medical Research Council (MRC) along with many other eminent scientists.

Personal life

Ahringer married Richard Durbin in 1996, with whom she has two children.