Vladimír Beneš, Head of EMBL GeneCore, studied in Prague. He has been at EMBL since 1994 when he came as a postdoc to the Ansorge group in the Biochemical Instrumentation Unit. Vladimir worked on development of methodology supporting genome-wide high-throughput sequencing, mainly in the sample processing part. In 2001 he was appointed to build EMBL Genomics Core Facility, a technology oriented service laboratory founded to assist researchers with functional genomics projects. This facility is currently utilizing mainly massively parallel sequencing and supporting technologies, such as qPCR, for example. Most recently, Vladimir’s expertise has enlarged by adding single-cell genomic approaches. Among Vladimir’s tasks is assessment of new technologies and their applications in functional genomics, in particular their suitability for implementation in the environment of core facilities. He is also strongly involved in teaching of methods applied in this field.