Philippe Collas is Professor of medical biochemistry and Chair of the Department of Molecular Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Oslo. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences . He got his undergraduate and Master’s degrees from France, and his PhD from the University of Massachusetts, in the area of embryo cloning and cell reprogramming. He then worked as Scientist with a US Biotech Company in Salt Late City and returned to academia in Massachusetts then in Oslo as research scientist. In 1999 he established his lab at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Oslo, where he became professor in 2003. His research focuses on elucidating chromatin-associated mechanisms driving adipose stem cell differentiation and function, and on how these processes go wrong in lipodystrophies caused by mutations in nuclear lamins. His lab has a particular interest in the impact of the 3D organization of the genome in these processes (www.collaslab.org).