Prof. em. Josef Jiricny

Josef Jiricny joined the ETH on the 1st October 2003, as the Bonizzi-Theler Professor of Functional Genomics. He is also a full professor at the University of Zurich, having joined the faculty of medicine on the 1st August 1996, and the faculty of science on the 1st October 1999.

Josef Jiricny was born in Prague on the 30th April 1951. In the summer of 1969 he emigrated to England, where he studied chemistry at the University of Aston in Birmingham. He obtained his PhD at the University of London. His first postdoctoral stage, at King's College, London, was devoted to the development of novel protecting groups for DNA synthesis. During his second postdoctoral stage at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund laboratories in London, he began to study the mechanisms of DNA repair. In 1983 he transferred his research to the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, where he became a senior group leader in 1989. One year later he accepted the position of a senior director of biochemistry at the newly-founded Istituto di Richerche di Biologia Molecolare (IRBM) near Rome, where he continued to study DNA repair mechanisms, as well as coordinating research programs aimed at the discovery of novel antiviral substances. In August 1996 he moved to Zurich as director of the Institute of Molecular Cancer Research (formerly the Institute of Medical Radiobiology) of the medical faculty of the University of Zurich.

Josef Jiricny studies the mechanisms of DNA mismatch repair in human cells. His research is currently focusing on the identification of the remaining components of this system and on its reconstitution from purified recombinant proteins. In parallel, he is studying the link between mismatch repair malfunction and colon cancer. He was elected to EMBO in 1996 and is a member of the editorial board of the EMBO Journal, EMBO Reports and Chemistry and Biology. He also acts on several advisory boards and is currently chairman of the steering committee of the Functional Genomics Center Zurich.