Professor Darzynkiewicz received a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1976 from Warsaw University and, in 1994, a D.Habil. from the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology in Nutley, New Jersey, and a visiting scientist at the University of Turku in Finland and at the University of Southern California-Los Angeles. He is a three-time winner of the Award of Rector of Warsaw University, and he has received an award from the Scientific Secretary of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is currently working in the Department of Biophysics, Institute of Experimental Physics, at Warsaw University.

Edward Darzynkiewicz conducts cross-disciplinary research on the chemistry, biology, and biophysics of the 5′ mRNA cap structure. He designs and synthesizes cap analogues that are used as valuable tools to characterize different cap-interacting proteins and, more generally, to search for gene-regulatory mechanisms.