Speakers

Serena Nik-Zainal

Professor of Genomic Medicine and Bioinformatics, University of Cambridge, UK

Serena Nik-Zainal is a Professor of Genomic Medicine and Bioinformatics and an NIHR Research Professor at the University of Cambridge. She leads the Genomic Medicine theme at the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Campus, advancing cancer genomics through computational and experimental approaches. Her work focuses on mutational mechanisms, machine-learning clinical algorithms, and their integration into clinical trials.

Serena pioneered whole genome sequencing (WGS), identifying mutational signatures and phenomena like "kataegis." She has contributed to pan-cancer analyses for the UK 100,000 Genomes Project, interpreting over 15,000 cancer genomes, and uses cellular models like CRISPR-Cas9 to study somatic mutations.

With seven patent filings, she is driving clinical applications of cancer genomics, linking biological insights to therapies.

Serena Nik-Zainal is giving the [BC]² opening lecture on Monday 8 September.

Peer Bork

Director of EMBL Heidelberg, Germany

More info to come.

Peer Bork is giving the keynote lecture on Tuesday 9 September.

Aurélie Cobat

Theme leader Computational Genetics, Institut Imagine, France

Aurélie Cobat is an INSERM-appointed Assistant Professor at the Imagine Institute in the Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases (HGID) and Guest Investigator at The Rockefeller University in the St. Giles Laboratory of HGID. Her research focuses on the human genetic contribution to the natural history of mycobacterial and viral infections. She completed a medical degree with a diploma of specialized studies of Public Health at the French Paris Descartes University in 2009. During her medical training, she extended her work to research and joined the HGID laboratory (led by Dr Laurent Abel and Pr Jean-Laurent Casanova) in Paris, France, as a PhD student in Genetic Epidemiology. She began studying the human genetic basis of the early phase of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection. During her postdoctoral training at McGill University, Canada, she studied the genetic components of the second most common mycobacterial infection, leprosy. When she returned to the HGID laboratory in 2013, she began to work on viral diseases. In 2016, she was recruited as an INSERM researcher in the HGID laboratory, where she lead a research team focusing on computational genetics of human infections.

Aurélie Cobat is presenting in the session Bioinformatics in infectious diseases: tackling challenges from hosts to pathogens.

Elodie Laine

Full Professor in Computational Biology and Artificial Intelligence, Laboratory of Computational and Quantitative Biology, Sorbonne Université, France

More infos to come.

Elodie Laine is presenting in the session Protein design and modeling molecular assemblies: breakthroughs and applications in computational structural biology.

Eline Lorenzen

Professor, Globe Institute, Section for Molecular Ecology and Evolution at University of Copenhagen, Denmark

More infos to come. 

Eline Lorenzen is presenting in the session Integrative bioinformatics for evolutionary and environmental processes

Mor Nitzan

Assistant Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Group's webpage

Nitzan’s research focuses on deciphering complex collective behavior in biological systems by combining tools and ideas from computer science and physics. She develops theoretical and computational tools based on machine learning and dynamic systems to decode layers of hidden information encoded by cells and related to the structure of body tissues and dynamic biological processes. The goal of her research is to better define the basic principles that shape multicellular biological systems, thereby enhancing our understanding and ability to control collective biological behavior.

Mor Nitzan is presenting in the session Computational methods for single-cell and spatial omics: from data to biological insights.

Païvi Östling

Associate Professor, Karolinska Institute, Sweden
Scientific Lead of Precision Medicine, SciLifeLab

Päivi Östling has more than 10 years of research experience in the field of precision cancer medicine (PCM) research. As of 2016, she has been responsible for establishing a functional precision medicin (fPM) platform at SciLifeLab through the Olli Kallioniemi research group where she also acts as a co-principal investigator. The groups research focuses on individualized drug profiling including multi-omics in acute myeloid leukemia, ovarian and bladder cancer as well as pediatric tumors.

Since June 2021, she is one of the Scientific Leads of Precision Medicine at SciLifeLab that aims to enable next generation precision medicine and define a strategic roadmap towards this. In addition, she has key positions of trust within the Swedish Life Science sector including the board of PCM Program at KI, Cancer Research KI, SWELife and Genomic Medicine Sweden.

Through her research focus, her experience in establishing research infrastructure for precision medicine and her commissions of trust she is uniquely placed to provide valuable insights into the complex landscape of precision medicine.

Païvi Östling is presenting in the session Clinical data science: advancements in diagnostics and patient care.

Itay Tirosh

Professor, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Group's webpage

Itay Tirosh obtained his PhD in computational biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science. From 2012 to 2017 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Regev and Golub labs at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he pioneered the application of single cell RNA sequencing to human tumors. Since 2017 he has been a PI at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The Tirosh lab is applying single cell and spatial technologies to clinical tumor samples, and combines that with extensive computational analysis to understand the diversity of cells within human tumors and the implication of such diversity. The lab studies multiple tumor types but is primarily focused on glioma and head and neck cancer.

Itay Tirosh is presenting in the session Bioinformatics for cancer research.