Quick Facts
Biography
Thomas Jenuwein born in Lohr am Main, Germany, graduated in 1987 from EMBL Heidelberg working on fos oncogenes in the laboratory of Rolf Müller. He performed postdoctoral studies on the IgH enhancer with Rudolf Grosschedl at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). As an independent group leader at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna (1993-2008), he focused his research to chromatin regulation. In 2000, he discovered the first histone lysine methyltransferase. He is now director at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, Freiburg, Germany where he heads the department of Epigenetics. He was elected as an EMBO member in 2002 and received the Sir Hans Krebs Medal of the FEBS Society in 2005 and the Erwin Schrödinger Prize by the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2007. From 2004 to 2009, he coordinated the EU-funded network of excellence 'The Epigenome', which connected more than 80 laboratories in Europe.
Education
- University of Erlangen and University of Heidelberg, Diploma in Molecular Biology
- EMBL, Heidelberg, Ph.D., Biology, 1987
- UCSF, San Francisco, Postdoctoral fellow, 1988-1993
Awards and memberships
- 2002 Elected member of EMBO
- 2002-2007 Member Faculty of 1000 (Nuclear Structure and Function)
- 2003 Honorary Professorship in Epigenetics at Vienna University
- 2005 Sir Hans Krebs Medal of FEBS Society
- 2007 Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
- 2010 Co-opting Professorship, Medical Faculty, University of Freiburg
- 2013 Member of Academia Europaea
- 2017 Elected corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences