Lucia Daxinger trained as a Molecular Geneticist with Dr. Marjori Matzke at the Gregor Mendel Institute for Molecular Plant Sciences in Vienna, Austria. During her PhD she was involved in the discovery of some of the major proteins required for RNA-directed DNA methylation, a small RNA-mediated epigenetic pathway in plants. She was intrigued that many of the factors required for epigenetic silencing are conserved between organisms, which led her to branch out from plants to mammals. In 2009, she was awarded an Erwin Schroedinger Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Austrian Science Fund and moved to Brisbane, Australia. In Prof. Emma Whitelaw’s laboratory Lucia was involved in a large chemical mutagenesis screen to identify factors required for epigenetic silencing in mammals. In 2013, she was awarded the LUMC Fellowship that allowed her to establish a junior research group at the Human Genetics Department. In 2018, she received an NWO-VIDI grant. Lucia’s research aims to understand how aberrant epigenetic state can result in disease phenotype.