Michaela Frye completed her PhD in Frankfurt/Main in Germany in 2000 studying the role of epithelial defensins in Cystic Fibrosis.
In 2001, she joined Cancer Research UK (CR-UK) in London as a Postdoctoral Fellow, where she studied how stem cells form and maintain adult tissues.
In 2007, Michaela started her independent research group at the Wellcome Trust – Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. She received a CR-UK Career Development Fellowship in 2007 and a CR-UK Senior Fellowship and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2013 to study how dysregulation of stem cell function contributes to human diseases and cancer.
In 2019, she accepted a Professorship at the DKFZ in Heidelberg Germany where her group studies mechanisms regulating gene expression that regulate stem cell fate in normal tissues and cancer. Since 2023, Michaela Frye is deputy scientific director at the DKFZ.