An interview with Azim Surani

Professor Azim Surani is the Director of Epigenomics and Germline Imprinting at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, UK. He is this year's recipient of both the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter prize, recognising his contributions to the discovery of genomic imprinting, the foundation of the modern field of epigenetics. In honour of the 40th anniversary of this seminal work, a Festschrift meeting was held at King's College, Cambridge, UK, titled 'Imprinting, Germlines, and how we got here'. In addition to the meeting notes, we interviewed Professor Surani about his non-traditional and inspirational route into academia.