Petra Hajkova is Professor of Developmental Epigenetics at Imperial College London and an MRC Investigator at the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences. She has made seminal contributions to our knowledge of how epigenetic information is maintained and reprogrammed in the context of development. Her research on epigenetic regulation and reprogramming in the germ line has profound implications for our understanding of germ cell formation and gametogenesis, passage of epigenetic information through the germ line across generations, assisted reproductive technologies and, more generally, for our understanding of the stability and maintenance of epigenetic information in development and disease.