Didier Trono is Professor of Genetics and Virology and Dean of the School of Life Sciences at the Swiss Institutes of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. After obtaining an M.D. from the University of Geneva and completing a clinical training in pathology, internal medicine and infectious diseases in Geneva and at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, he worked with David Baltimore at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research of MIT as a post-doctoral fellow. In 1990, he joined the faculty of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies to launch a centre for AIDS research. He moved back to Europe seven years later, before taking the reins of the newly created EPFL School of Life Sciences in 2004. Trono’s research focuses on interactions between viral pathogens and their hosts, and on the exploration of genetics from both fundamental and therapeutic perspectives. His laboratory is particularly interested in innate defenses against retroelements and in the role of epigenetics in the shaping of the expression of mammalian genomes.