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It is increasingly recognized that the epigenome plays a key role in carcinogenesis, either by directly deregulating key signaling pathways, or indirectly, by mediating the effects of genetic mutations.I will review the role of epigenomics in cancer, with a special focus on risk prediction and early detection.I will then motivate a systems perspective to cancer-omics, describing a number of systems epigenomics approaches we have taken to tackle key problems in the fields of risk prediction and early detection.Specifically, I will present one integrative algorithm which identified an epigenetic alteration causally implicated in the development of endometrial cancer, and which could serve as a non-invasive early detection test.I will also describe a systems epigenomics approach to infer disrupted regulatory networks in disease, illustrating its power with applications to aging and Epigenome-Wide Association Studies.Finally, I will describe our efforts to build epigenetic risk prediction models of epithelial cancers using tools rooted in statistical physics.In particular, I will present data supporting the view that intrasample epigenetic heterogeneity is maximal in stages immediately prior to the onset of cancer, consistent with a phase transition model of oncogenesis.