Mary Lyon Medal 2017

Petra Hajkova is the head of the Reprogramming and Chromatin Laboratory at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre in London and a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London. Her work focuses on the elucidation of molecular mechanisms implicated in the erasure of epigenetic information during epigenetic reprogramming in vivo.

Following her Masters studies at the Charles University in Prague and PhD studies at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, Petra joined the laboratory of Prof. Azim Surani in Cambridge as a postdoctoral fellow to investigate the processes of epigenetic reprogramming in vivo. In 2009 Petra established an independent laboratory at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre in London where she has been continuing her work on the mechanisms of epigenetic reprogramming using both genetic and biochemical approaches.

Petra is a member of the EMBO Young Investigator Programme and a recipient of the ERC Consolidator Grant. She has been selected as a RISE1 member of the EpigeneSys (EU FP7) network and an associated member of the EuroSyStem network.

Petra’s lecture entitled, “Epigenetic reprogramming in vivo: questions and (some) answers” was held on Tuesday 21 November 2017 at the Gordon Museum of Pathology, King’s College London, and was followed by a drinks reception