Kikuë Tachibana-Konwalski is Group leader at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology GmbH (IMBA) in Vienna. After earning a PhD in DNA replication at the University of Cambridge in 2005, she moved to a postdoctoral position at the University of Oxford in 2006. Since moving to Vienna in 2011 her group has worked on the mechanisms underlying the oocyte-to-zygote transition, one of the most dramatic passage happening in biology. During the zygote stage, maternal and paternal genomes remain as separate entities with distinct chromatin signatures. In Tachibana-Konwalski’s lab research focuses on how sperm chromatin is reorganized by maternal control inside the zygote after fertilization to ensure the correct reprogramming of the newly formed cell.