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Kerstin Howe is Head of Production Genomics for the Tree of Life Programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Chair of the Earth BioGenome Project’s International Scientific Committee. She completed her PhD in Genetics at Ruhr University Bochum and joined the Wellcome Sanger Institute in 2000. As a founding member of the Genome Reference Consortium, she has contributed to several foundational genome sequences, including those of zebrafish, human, mouse and chicken. She went on to lead genome assembly validation for the Vertebrate Genomes Project, an international initiative working toward high-quality reference genomes for all extant vertebrate species worldwide. Since 2021, she has managed genome assembly production for Wellcome Sanger’s Tree of Life Programme, driving the Darwin Tree of Life project’s mission to sequence all ~70,000 eukaryotic species in Britain and Ireland. In this role, she oversees both wet lab and bioinformatics operations and leads research and development into sequencing and assembly workflows. By now, her team has released more than 4000 high quality reference genome assemblies and continues to release a new one every six hours, a world-leading achievement in high-throughput biodiversity science.

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Norbert Kraut is a renowned international expert in cancer research, serving as Senior Executive Scientist at Boehringer Ingelheim. His tenure in the company was marked by his previous role as the Global Head of Cancer Research for over ten years. Norbert Kraut is also an alumnus of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, where he completed his predoctoral training in Heidelberg. Following postdoctoral work at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in the US, he joined Boehringer Ingelheim and has since spent more than two decades leading international oncology research programmes focused on translating discoveries in molecular and cellular biology into novel cancer therapies. His research and drug discovery programmes target key cancer-driving pathways, including p53, HER2, and KRAS alterations, which together are implicated in many cancers. Through these efforts, he has contributed to the development of innovative precision medicines and translational research strategies aimed at improving outcomes for patients with difficult-to-treat cancers.