Speaker Profiles

Chloé-Agathe Azencott is working in the research faculty at MINES ParisTech & Institut Curie in Paris, France.
Principal interest(s): Machine learning for genomics and precision medicine
Area(s) of research: Machine learning, GWAS, network biology

Keith Baggerly is a professor, bioinformatics and computational biologist at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, USA.
Principal interest(s): Bioinformatics, Experimental Design, Reproducible Research
Area(s) of research: Bioinformatics, Experimental Design, Reproducible Research

Agnes Bloch-Zupan is a professor in oral biology at the Université de Strasbourg, Faculty of Dentistry, at the Hôpitaux Universitaires de Strasbourg, Reference Center for Rare oral and dental diseases and at IGBMC (Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology) in Strasbourg, France.
Principal interest(s): Rare oral and dental diseases
Area(s) of research:  Orodental development and anomalies, genetics, omics, human, mouse models

Laurence Boon is a professor at the cliniqual university Saint-Luc and at the university catholique de Louvain as well as a coordinator of the Multidisciplinary Center for Vascular Anomalies/Plastic Surgeon in Brussels, Belgium. She is also a member of the Royal Belgian Academy of Medicine and is chairing an application for a European Reference Networking on Vascular Anomalies (VASCern).
Principal interest(s): Specialist in the Vascular Anomalies field
Area(s) of research: Interested in elucidating the pathophysiology of the vascular anomalies & phase I and II clinical trials of new medications

Piero Carninci is a deputy director at the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences in Yokohama, Japan.
Principal interest(s): FANTOM, Human Cell Atlas, Single cell genomics
Area(s) of research: Transcriptomics, Genomics

Anna Ceresto is a professor, and a Group Leader for Molecular Virology Lab, in the Centre for Integrative Biology (CIBIO) at the University of Trento (Italy)
Principal interest(s): the precision tools for genome editing (viral and non-viral vectors and CRISPR/Cas derived nucleases).
Area(s) of research: her main area of research is the Molecular Biology.

Michael Cheetham is a professor at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology in London, United Kingdom.
Principal interest(s): Mechanisms of retinal degeneration
Area(s) of research: Inherited disease, stem cell biology, animal models, cell biology of protein folding, protein traffic, RNA processing

Victor Corces is a professor at the Emory University in Atlanta, GI, USA.
Principal interest(s): Epigenetics
Area(s) of research: 3D organization of the chromatin and its relationship to transcription

Christel Depienne is a professor at the institution for human genetic at the university Essen in Essen, Germany.
Principal interest(s): Genetic basis of neurodevelopmental disorders
Area(s) of research: Brain malformations (agenesis of the corpus callosum), mirror movements, epileptic encephalopathy, intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorders

Diane Dickel is a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Berkeley, CA, USA.
Principal interest(s): Role of noncoding sequence variants in human disease, psychiatric genetics
Area(s) of research: Gene regulation

Helen Firth is a consultant clinical genetics at the Cambridge University Hospitals and a hon faculty member of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Principal interest(s): Clinical genomics & Mapping the clinical genome
Area(s) of research: Paediatric genomics & data-sharing

Andrew Forge is an meritus professor of auditory cell biology at the university college London, United Kingdom.
Principal interest(s): Structural organisation, development and pathology of the cochlea and vestibular system of the inner ear
Area(s) of research: Repair mechanisms and regeneration in the sensory epithelia of the inner ear; maintenance of cochlear homeostasis; biological responses to cochlear implantation

Jan Hoeijmakers is a professor at Erasmus MC at the department of molecular genetics in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Principal interest(s): DNA damage, repair, genome instability, cancer, aging
Area(s) of research: Molecular genetic, cell biology, mouse models, human disease

Björn Högberg is an associate professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
Principal interest(s): his main interests are the DNA tools and nanostructures for cell biology.
Area(s) of research: the DNA nanotechnology and the DNA probes.

Ophir Klein is a professor at the university in San Francisco, CA, USA.
Principal interest(s): Developmental genetics and stem cell biology
Area(s) of research: Craniofacial and gastrointestinal epithelial development and renewal

Arne Klungland ist a professor at the Institute of Medical Microbiology, BIG CAS-OSLO Genome Research Cooperation, Oslo University Hospital, Rikshospitalet, Oslo 0027, Norway

Lawrence C. Layman is a M.D. Chair in Endocrinology, a Chief and a Sect of Reproductive Endocrinology, Infertility, & Genetics. He is working at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University in Augusta, GI, USA.
Principal interest(s): Disorders of puberty, infertility, developmental disorders of the reproductive tract
Area(s) of research: Genetics of puberty and Mullerian development

Marc Lecuit is a professor and the head of unit at the institut pasteur in Paris, France.

Emma Lundberg is an associate professor in Stockhol, Sweden.
Principal interest(s): Spatial single cell biology
Area(s) of research: Proteomics, spatial single cell biology and citizen science

Outi Mäkitie is a professor of pediatric endocrinology at the University of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland.
Principal interest(s): Pediatric bone diseases
Area(s) of research: Clinical and genetic studies on metabolic bone diseases in children

Shoukhrat Mitalipov is a director of the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, OR, USA.
Dr. Mitalipov is known for his leading discoveries in producing human patient-matched embryonic stem cells using somatic cell nuclear transfer. His team has also pioneered a gene therapy approach that prevents transmission of genetic defects in mitochondrial genes from mothers to their children.

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Luigi Naldini is a director at the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for GeneTherapy (SR-Tiget) in Milan, Italy.
Principal interest(s): Gene Therapy, Tumor Angiogenesis

Madalina Radu is a researcher and a genetic counselor in the department of Psychology, at the Babes-Bolyai University in Romania.
Principal interest(s): Madalina Radu is interested in genetic counselling and psychotherapy.
Area(s) of research: Her areas of research are the genetic counselling:
-for children and adolescents,
-for families with children with genetic disorders,
-for mental health problems.

Mark J. Ratain is a professor at the university in Chicago, IL, USA.
Principal interest(s): Pharmacogenomics, individualized anticancer therapies
Area(s) of research: pharmacogenomics, New oncology drugs, diagnostics, clinical trial methodology, phase I clinical trials

Neville Sanjana is an assistant professor and in the core faculty at the New York Genome Center and NYU in New York, NY, USA.
Principal interest(s): Genome engineering, functional genomics
Area(s) of research: New York Genome Center and NYU

Alexander Schier is a professor at Harvard university in Cambridge, MA, USA.
Principal interest(s): Development, behavior
Area(s) of research: Embryogenesis, sleep

Isabel Silveira is a group leader at the IBMC and i3S, University of Porto in Porto, Portugal.
Principal interest(s): Genetics of neurodegenerative diseases
Area(s) of research: Identification of genes and molecular mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases

Andrew Sinclair is a deputy director and professor at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.
Principal interest(s): Sex Development and Disorders
Area(s) of research: Genomics and Stem Cell Medicine

Michael Speicher is a professor of human genetics at the Medical University of Graz in Graz, Austria.
Principal interest(s): Human Genetics
Area(s) of research: Hereditary tumor syndromes and liquid biopsies

Fran Supek is a group leader at the institute for research in biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) in Barcelona, Spain.
Principal interest(s): Mutation and selection in somatic cells
Area(s) of research: Computational genomics

Bas Van Steensel is a research group leader at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Principal interest(s): Chromatin Genomics

Miikka Vikkula is a professor of human molecular genetics at the de Duve Institute in Brussels, Belgium.
Principal interest(s): Understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie a variety of disorders of the cardiovascular and skeletal systems, as well as certain cancers. We specialize in evaluating the contribution of genetic variation to human disease and in vivo studies using genetically manipulated mice. Also interested in developing novel therapeutic approaches.
Area(s) of research: Our laboratory combines a large bio-bank of patient blood and tissue samples associated with extensive clinical data, with large-scale genotyping data generated using cutting-edge Next Generation Sequencing techniques and a state-of-the-art data analysis pipeline developed in-house. Gene-discovery is followed by the generation of cell and animal models in which disruption of the culprit gene is used to recapitulate features of the human disease. These models are then used to study the molecular and biological consequences of disease causative genetic changes, as well as to test potential therapeutic solutions. All of our research begins with samples obtained from patients, and we aim to go full circle: from bed to bench-side back to bed, providing patients with viable and tangible knowledge-based improvements in their health-care.
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