Roman Alpatov is a Clinical Genomics Variant Scientist at IBM Watson. He obtained his Ph.D. degree at the University of Florida, where he independently developed a new concept describing a novel function of the splicing regulator Pinin in the regulation of transcription. In addition, using a transcriptional co-repressor CtBP as a model, Roman introduced a new paradigm, such as simultaneous regulation of a tumor suppressor gene activity through the coordinated action at transcriptional and splicing proteins. After obtaining his Ph.D. degree, Roman pursued his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, where he studied epigenetics of fragile X syndrome. He described for the first time the role of fragile X mental retardation protein FMRP in DNA damage response at the chromatin interface, a significant finding which will hopefully open new avenues in treatments of this disorder. Specifically, he found that FMRP binds methylated chromatin, a previously unknown feature of this molecule, and regulates DNA damage response in a chromatin-dependent manner. These findings offer an entirely new paradigm in fragile X field, where FMRP participates in the nuclear events in addition to its classical role as a translational regulator in the cytoplasm. Roman also introduced a potential role for FMRP in metastatic cancer.