Dr. Xiaodong Cheng received his Ph.D. in Protein Crystallography from State University of New York at Story Brook in 1989. He subsequently joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1990, reaching the position of Senior Staff Investigator. It was at Cold Spring Harbor laboratory he began a fruitful collaboration with Sir Richard J. Roberts that led to the discovery of DNA base flipping, whereby a DNA base is swung completely out of the double helix. In 1997, he moved to Emory University as a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and Professor of Biochemistry at the School of Medicine. In 2017, he joined University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center as a professor of Molecular and Cellular Oncology. Dr. Cheng contributed to the field of epigenetics by elucidating structural insights and enzymatic mechanisms of DNA and histone modification enzymes. His current work focuses on cancer epigenetics.