Jürg Bähler completed his PhD at the University of Bern (Switzerland). After short stays as Research Associate in Switzerland and Japan, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow with John Pringle at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, USA) and with Paul Nurse at Imperial Cancer Research Fund (London, UK). In 2000, Bähler joined the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (Hinxton, UK) as a Group Leader. He was appointed as Professor of Molecular Systems Biology at University College London (UCL) in 2009, and as Director of UCL’s Institute of Healthy Ageing in 2019. His laboratory studies cellular quiescence, ageing and long non-coding RNAs using fission yeast and, recently, the turquoise killifish as model systems. They apply diverse genetic/genomic, cell-biological and computational approaches towards a systems-level understanding of genome regulation and function, ageing-associated processes such as energy metabolism, and the complex relationships between genotype, phenotype and environment.