What would you like people to know about epigenetics?

Epigenetics is about how a genome can be used in multiple ways during development and lead to stable, memorable characteristics during life: how one goes from just a single cell, a fertilized egg, to a much more complex organism. A number of decisions are made about which genes are expressed, which aren’t expressed. Once those decisions are made, how are they maintained, so that when a cell has decided to become a skin cell, it doesn’t suddenly change its mind and become a neuron. Epigenetics is about the making of those choices and the maintenance of those choices.

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

The first thing I really thought I would do was become a musician. I played a lot of piano and then the clarinet. Then, I became good at math and became quite obsessive about trying to understand things. I was only 10 or 11 years old, and I was already asking existential questions about math. I discovered biology at university, and that was truly a eureka moment for me.

Where do you find sources of creativity?

The moments where I’m most creative are when I’m forced out of my comfort zone. It’s frightening, this moment of ‘Oh my God, I don’t know what’s going on.’ Moving from one place to another [to France, the United States and Germany], each of those moments was really a moment of creativity for me, because it got me thinking differently.

“You can define success by how much you’ve allowed a new generation of science to happen.”