Virginijus Siksnys

Virginijus Šiksnyš studied chemistry at Vilnius University and obtained his PhD from Moscow State University before returning to Vilnius to pursue his research career at the Institute of Applied Enzymology/Institute of Biotechnology. Since 2002 he has been a Professor at Vilnius University and Chief Scientist at the Institute of Biotechnology.

Professor Šiksnyš has made major and sustained contributions to understanding the structure and function of restriction enzymes, and his ground-breaking research on the CRISPR-Cas system had a major impact on the field of molecular biology. Specifically, his studies of the Cas9 protein paved the way for developing novel genome editing tools across a range of applications and myriad future uses in science.

He is a member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, EMBO and FEMS. His work was recently recognized with several awards and prizes, including the prestigious Kavli Prize in 2018.