Professor Bernard Thienpont was trained as a bioengineer at KU Leuven. During his doctoral research, he made significant contributions to genetics, including the discovery of a new genetic syndrome and a gene that causes heart defects. He subsequently conducted research in Cambridge on the epigenetic causes of heart disease and at the VIB Vesalius Research Center on cancer epigenetics. Since 2018, he has led the Laboratory for Functional Epigenetics in the Department of Human Genetics. Here, together with his team, he aims to uncover epigenetic causes and biomarkers of diseases using advanced genomic technologies. He has authored over 100 publications and has been a (co-)investigator in more than 20 national and European projects. Additionally, he is a co-founder of the Leuven Institute for Single Cell Omics and an active member of the Leuven Cancer Institute.