Anne Ferguson-Smith is Professor of Developmental Genetics at the University of Cambridge. She is an authority on the epigenetic control of genome function in health and disease. She is recognized for her work on parental-origin effects and epigenetic mechanisms starting with the identification of one of the first imprinted genes and the discovery that the process was regulated by DNA methylation. She has also made important contributions to our understanding of the function of non-coding RNAs that make up a large proportion of the mammalian transcriptome. Using imprinting as a paradigm of epigenetic control, her studies have forged links between DNA sequence, epigenetic state and gene regulation.