Robin Lovell-Badge is group leader in Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics at the Francis Crick Institute. Major themes of his work include sex determination, the role of Sox genes in development of the early embryo, the nervous system and the pituitary, and the biology of stem cells within these tissues.

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

He was elected a Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization in 1993, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1999, and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001. He is the recipient of the 1995 Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine, the 1996 Amory Prize awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the 2008 Feldberg Foundation Prize, and the 2010 Waddington Medal awarded by the British Society for Developmental Biology.