Andrew Feinberg studied mathematics and humanities at Yale University (CT, USA) in the Directed Studies honors program, and he received his BA (1973) and MD (1976) from the accelerated medical program at Johns Hopkins University (MD, USA), as well as an MPH from Johns Hopkins (1981). He performed a postdoctoral fellowship in developmental biology at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD, CA, USA), clinical training in medicine and medical genetics at the University of Pennsylvania (PA, USA) and genetics research with Bert Vogelstein at Johns Hopkins, discovering altered DNA methylation in human cancer. Dr Feinberg continued to perform seminal work in cancer epigenetics as a Howard Hughes investigator at the University of Michigan (MI, USA), discovering human imprinted genes and loss of imprinting in cancer, and the molecular basis of Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome. He returned to John Hopkins in 1994 as King Fahd Professor of Medicine, Molecular Biology & Genetics and Oncology, and he holds an Adjunct Professorship at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Dr Feinberg is Director of the Center for Epigenetics, a National Human Genome Research Institute-designated Center of Excellence in Genome Sciences. The Center is pioneering genome-scale tools in molecular, statistical and epidemiological epigenetics, and is applying them to the study of cancer, neuropsychiatric disease and aging. As part of the center, Dr Feinberg has organized a highly innovative program to bring gifted minority high-school students into genetics and genomics. Dr Feinberg has also invented a number of widely used molecular tools, including random priming. His honors include election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as membership on the ISI most-cited authors list, a MERIT Award of the National Cancer Institute, a Doctor of Philosophy (Hon. Caus.) from Uppsala University (Sweden), and the President's Diversity Recognition Award of Johns Hopkins University.