BBSRC Council member
James Briscoe is a Senior Independent Member of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Council.
James is a principal group leader and associate research director at the Francis Crick Institute. He obtained a BSc in Microbiology and Virology from the University of Warwick. James completed his PhD research in Ian Kerr’s laboratory at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, which became Cancer Research UK and is now part of the Francis Crick Institute. After this, he undertook postdoctoral training at Columbia University, New York, with Thomas Jessell, first as a Human Frontiers Science Program Fellow then as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellow.
In 2000 he moved to the Medical Research Council’s National Institute for Medical Research, now part of the Francis Crick Institute, to establish his own research group. In 2001 he was elected an European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Young Investigator. He was awarded the EMBO Gold Medal in 2008 and elected to EMBO in 2009.
In 2018 he became Editor in Chief of Development, a journal published by the Company of Biologists, a not-for-profit scientific publisher. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2019. In 2023 he was elected an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
His research interests include the molecular and cellular mechanisms of vertebrate embryo development and the role of gene regulation in the specification of cell fate. To address these questions his lab uses a range of experimental and computational techniques with model systems that include mouse, human and chick embryos, and mouse and human embryonic stem cells.
Last updated: 31 March 2025