Robin Howard Lovell-Badge is a senior group leader and head of the Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics at the Francis Crick Institute. His research focuses on sex determination, the development of the nervous system, and the biology of stem cells within the early embryo, central nervous system and pituitary.
He originally obtained his PhD in Embryology at University College London. After postdoctoral research in Cambridge and Paris, he established an independent laboratory at the Medical Research Council’s Mammalian Development Unit. He then moved to the National Institute for Medical Research, which has now been incorporated into the Francis Crick Institute. In 1990, his laboratory discovered Sry, the Y-linked testis determining gene. Sex determination remains a major focus of his current research. He is also very active in public engagement and policy work around stem cells, genetics, human embryo and animal research, and the ways in which science is regulated and disseminated.