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first reaction to winning the Nobel Prize, despit
e the reoccurring speculations, was that she could not believe it. ”It is still very emotional,” she said to Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer of Nobel Media, the same day she received the famous telephone call. “I also think of my colleagues, all the former members of my team, Elitza Deltcheva and Krzysztof Chylinski, who really also made this happen,” Charpentier added. That her discovery of the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors would be ground-breaking she did really believe in – already from the start. “I understood very quickly that if CRISPR/Cas was to be exploited as a tool for genome silencing and engineering, then the CRISPR/Cas9 system would provide the best opportunities for application – because it is the simplest of the CRISPR/Cas systems existing in bacteria. I had even predicted early on that the system could be harnessed to treat human genetic disorders, which the Swiss-based company CRISPR Therapeutics that I cofounded, together with Rodger Novak and Shaun Foy, now focuses on,” Charpentier said in an interview with EMBO in 2015. The 2020 Nobel Prize was unique in many ways, not least due to the ongoing pandemic. The 2020 Laureates obviously missed out on the traditional festivities in Stockholm, but the year was also unique due to the fact that it was the first time two women scientists shared a Nobel Prize. Charpentier said in the interview with 46 NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG Nobel Media that she is foremost a scientist, but she also says that it is important to send a message to girls and young women choosing to focus on science. “It is a reflection of what is occurring nowadays. You don’t specifically look at the gender, and it’s a good example to show that nowadays it is what happens, you have a lot of collaborations happening among, let’s say, male leaders only or female leaders only, or a mix, and it’s fine, it’s the way it’s supposed to be, it should be a natural process.” Emmanuelle, born 1968, grew up in Juvisy-sur-Orge in the north of France. Her mother worked in psychiatry and her father was responsible for planning green spaces in the city. For a period of time she wanted to become a detective, Emmanuelle stated in an interview with Swedish Television (2020), and she reflects that is actually not so far from what she is doing today; looking for clues to solve a problem. Charpentier started studying biology and genetics at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris. She was drawn to the university not only because of the subjects she studied, but also because of the somewhat monastic atmosphere it possessed, an isolated and quiet environment where she could always develop and be able to pass her knowledge on, she said to Swedish Television. Emmanuelle continued to perform her doctoral studies at the Institute Pasteur in Paris and she became a microbiologist. She was a post-doc at Institut Pasteur and then at The Rockefeller University, New York. Including Paris, Emmanuelle has lived in five different countries, seven different cities, and