Eugene Makeyev was born in Kursk, Russia and graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University and Institute of Protein Research, Russia. He obtained his Ph.D. degree at the University of Helsinki, Finland in 2001 and was subsequently a postdoc in Tom Maniatis’s laboratory at Harvard University, USA. In 2008, he started his own group at the School of Biological Sciences, NTU, Singapore. He moved to Department of Developmental Neurobiology, KCL in 2013. Eugene’s awards and recognitions include Helsinki Biocenter Prize for the Best Ph.D. Thesis (2001), Helsinki University Docentship (2003), Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Career Development Award (2004), and Singapore National Research Foundation Fellowship (2008).