Wolf Reik

Director at the Babraham Institute, Professor of Epigenetics
University of Cambridge

Wolf Reik obtained his MD from the University of Hamburg. He did his thesis work with Rudolf Jaenisch, and postdoctoral work with Azim Surani in Cambridge. He became a Fellow of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine at Cambridge and subsequently the Head of the Epigenetics Programme at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge and was until recently its Director. He is honorary Professor of Epigenetics at the University of Cambridge, Associate Faculty at the Sanger Institute, where he is a founding member of the Centre for Single Cell Genomics, Affiliate Faculty at the Stem Cell Institute, and a member of the Centre for Trophoblast Research. He is a member of EMBO, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Society, and a member of the Academia Europaea. He is since March 2022 the Director of the Altoslabs Cambridge Institute.

The research interests of his lab are in epigenetics, particularly in epigenetic reprogramming during mammalian development and its role in stem cell biology, inheritance, and ageing. Their current work addresses the mechanisms of genome-wide demethylation in the mammalian germ line, links between reprogramming, zygotic genome activation and pluripotency, epigenetic regulation of cell fate decisions in early development, and the role of epigenetic mechanisms in ageing. The lab also develops new epigenomics technologies especially in single cells. Wolf currently advises Cambridge Epigenetix and Shift Bioscience, companies that originated on the Babraham Research Campus based in part on discoveries made at the Institute.