Ryan Lister is the Professor in the School of Molecular Sciences at ARC Centre for Plant Energy Biology and at International Space Centre, the University of Western Australia. He is also a Sylvia and Charles Viertel Senior Medical Research Fellow and head of the Epigenetics and Genomics laboratory at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and UWA.

His research has yielded new insights into the composition and function of the epigenome in a variety of systems, including the first integrated maps of the epigenome and transcriptome in a eukaryote, generation of the first human DNA methylomes, identification of epigenomic memory in human induced pluripotent stem cells, and discovery of widespread epigenome reconfiguration during brain development.

Ryan completed his Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Genetics at The University of Western Australia (UWA) in 2000, and undertook his PhD studies in plant mitochondrial biogenesis at UWA from 2001-2005. After completing his PhD, Ryan was awarded a Human Frontiers Science Program Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2006 to undertake his postdoctoral studies in Joseph Ecker’s laboratory at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California.