Lessons in chromatin organization and gender equity in research: an interview with Susan Gasser

In this interview, Professor Susan Gasser speaks with Storm Johnson, commissioning editor for Epigenomics, on her research on genome stability, epigenetic regulation and chromatin organization, as well as her work supporting women in research. Susan Gasser completed her BA at the University of Chicago, with an honors thesis in biophysics, and her PhD in biochemistry at the University of Basel in 1982, with Gottfried Schatz. She was a postdoc with Ulrich Laemmli at the University of Geneva, which initiated her career-long interest in chromosomes and chromatin structure. She established her own laboratory at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) in 1986, focusing on chromatin organization in budding yeast, combining genetics, microscopy and biochemical approaches to understanding silent chromatin and telomeres. In 2001, she was named professor of molecular biology at the University of Geneva and expanded her laboratory's pioneering use of high-resolution time-lapse fluorescence microscopy to study single locus dynamics in the nucleus. From 2004 to 2019, Susan was the Director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, where she also led a research group until the end of 2020. In Basel, she extended her research interests into heterochromatin in Caenorhabditis elegans. Her laboratory identified the mechanisms that position tissue-specific genes in the nuclei of embryos and of differentiated tissues, combining high throughput molecular analyses with cell biology to determine structure-function relationships in chromatin. Since January 2021, Susan Gasser has been professor invité at the University of Lausanne and Director of the ISREC Foundation, where she is helping shape the new Agora Institute of Translational Cancer Research. She was elected to the Académie de France, Leopoldina, European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), American Association for the Advancement of Science and Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, and she received the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) International Prize in 2011, the Federation of European Biochemical Societies | EMBO Women in Science Award in 2012, the Weizmann Institute Women in Science Award in 2013 and honorary doctorates from the University of Lausanne, the University of Fribourg and Charles University in Prague. In Switzerland, she was the recipient of the Friedrich Miescher Award, the National Latsis Prize and the Otto Naegeli Award for the promotion of medical research. She participates in numerous review boards and advisory committees in Switzerland, across Europe and in Japan; she currently serves on the governing board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology and the Swiss Science Council. From 2000 to 2004, she was vice chairperson, then chairperson of the EMBO Council. Susan led the Gender Committee of the Swiss National Science Foundation from 2014 to 2019 and initiated the Swiss National Science Foundation Prima program for the Promotion of women in academia. She has actively promoted the careers of women scientists in Europe and Japan.