Szyf is a professor of pharmacology at McGill University in Montreal Canada and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Szyf has pioneered research in DNA methylation for the last three decades and published more than 300 papers on the biological role of DNA methylation that span a broad spectrum from basic mechanisms to cancer diagnostics and therapeutics, behavior, pain and addiction. Szyf founded HKG epitherapeutics at the HKG science park which develops a novel class of epigenetic early detection markers of cancer and epigenetic tests of ageing.