Speakers

Jennifer Roth serves as the Director of the PRISM team within the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Over the last 12 years, she has expanded the PRISM platform, a multiplexed therapeutic mapping screening technology to encompass more than 900 cancer cell lines. This powerful technology correlates PRISM viability results with functional and baseline genomic data from the Cancer Dependency Map to identify the mechanism of action of drugs. Her contributions include co-authoring over 50 publications, and data generated by PRISM has been instrumental in supporting Investigational New Drug (IND) filings.

Before working at the Broad Institute, Jennifer spent over a decade in the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors, specialising in the development of both small and large molecules for oncology and immunology disease areas. During her time at Merck, she was part of the team responsible for the first HDAC inhibitor to receive FDA approval. Her academic background includes a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of New Hampshire, an M.A. in Biology from Brown University, and an M.B.A. in Strategy and Business Analysis from Boston University.

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.

Paul Flicek is a Research Professor at the Institute for Systems Genomics of the University of Connecticut, where he started in 2026.

Following a BS in Physics from Drake University, Paul earned a Doctor of Science in Biomedical Engineering from Washington University in St Louis where he participated in the initial sequencing of the human and mouse genomes. He moved to Cambridge, England, in 2005 for a postdoc at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), where he became a member of the EMBL faculty in 2007 and held progressively senior roles including Associate Director for EMBL-EBI Services starting in 2019. His team at EBI developed and maintained Ensembl, a genome browser and annotation resource that serves tens of thousands of users daily. Paul became the inaugural Chief Data Science Officer at The Jackson Laboratory in 2023, where he stayed until moving to UConn in 2026.

Throughout his career, which has been characterised by projects on genome annotation, comparative regulatory genomics, and large-scale biological data, he has been involved with many major international collaborative efforts including ENCODE, the 1000 Genomes Project, and the International Human Epigenome Consortium.

Petra Dittrich is Professor for Bioanalytics at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich. She studied chemistry at the Universities of Bielefeld and Salamanca and obtained her PhD in 2003 at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. Following postdoctoral research at the Leibniz Institute for Analytical Sciences in Dortmund, she conducted research stays at Cornell University and the University of Tokyo. Since joining ETH Zurich in 2008, she has established an internationally recognised research program in bioanalytics and microfluidics. Her work has been recognised with numerous distinctions, including European Research Council Starting and Consolidator Grants, the Analytica Research Prize of the Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Heinrich Emanuel Merck Prize.

Her research focuses on the development of microfluidic and lab-on-chip technologies for applications in the life sciences, integrating chemistry, engineering, physics, and biology in highly interdisciplinary ways. Her group develops miniaturised analytical platforms for single-cell analysis, droplet microfluidics, artificial cells, membrane studies, and diagnostic applications. By combining automation and high-throughput bioanalytical methodologies, her work enables precise investigation of complex biological systems and contributes to the advancement of next-generation tools for diagnostics, drug discovery, and cellular analysis.

Robert Waterhouse is the director of the Environmental Bioinformatics Group at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. The group’s activities and research are focused on developing data science solutions to address the challenge of protecting and restoring the environment that sustains humankind. By meeting key needs in biodiversity data collection, integration, and analysis, the team delivers tools and services to support data-driven, empirically informed, and model-guided policies and actions.

Sarela García-Santamarina is Professor and Head of the Department of Deep Microbiome Metabolomics at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI, Germany). She obtained her PhD in Biomedicine from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF, Spain). She previously led an independent research program at ITQB NOVA (Portugal), following postdoctoral research at Duke University (USA) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL, Germany).

Her main research interest is microbiome science, with a focus on molecular microbiology, systems biology, and host-microbe dynamics. By integrating synthetic microbial communities, anaerobic high-throughput platforms, and organ-on-chip technologies, she aims to mechanistically dissect how complex microbial ecosystems shape (and are shaped by) drugs and nutrients, and how these interactions ultimately influence host physiology.

Full bio and talk details coming soon.

Dr. Gaurav Ahuja is an Associate Professor at IIIT-Delhi, where he leads the Chemical Biology Laboratory. He earned his PhD in Natural Sciences from the University of Cologne, followed by postdoctoral fellowships in Germany and Singapore. His research integrates artificial intelligence with systems biology to decode how endogenous metabolites regulate aging, cancer, and cellular signalling. His landmark contributions include AI platforms for predicting carcinogenic metabolites, discovering natural geroprotectors, mapping single-cell aging, and revealing endogenous sterols as allosteric GPCR modulators.

He has received the Humboldt Research Fellowship, EMBO Young Investigator Award, INSA Young Associate and Medal, Merck Scientific Excellence Award, and the Global 3Rs Award. He serves on multiple editorial boards and engages with industry as a scientific consultant and co-founder of a deep-tech startup focused on lossless genomic compression and quantum encryption.

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.

Virginie Uhlmann is Assistant Professor in Bioimaging and Data Analysis in the Department of Molecular Life Sciences at the University of Zurich (Switzerland). She obtained her MSc in Bioengineering, and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland). She has also been a Research Group Leader at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI, Cambridge, UK) since 2018.

Her main research interest is quantitative bioimage analysis, with a focus in approximation theory, machine learning, and computational geometry. In addition to her research activities in Cambridge and Zurich, she is leading the BioVisionCenter, a Technology Platform of the University of Zurich aimed at democratising advanced bioimage analysis and advancing development of Open Science practices for microscopy imaging data.

Giovanni Stracquadanio is a Personal Chair in Engineering Biology at the University of Edinburgh, where he also serves as a UKRI EPSRC Fellow, Deputy Director of the Centre for Engineering Biology, and Co-director of the Edinburgh Genome Foundry. With over 15 years of experience intersecting artificial intelligence, computational biology, and molecular genetics, his research focuses on using generative AI and advanced automation to address major biomedical challenges.

He was a key contributor to the international Synthetic Yeast Genome Project (Sc2.0), pioneering the core algorithms and software used to design the world’s first synthetic eukaryotic genome. His current work bridges the gap between machine learning and medicine, leveraging lab automation to engineer next-generation enzyme replacement therapies for rare genetic conditions.

Ross D. King has joint positions at the University of Cambridge (Biotechnology), and is Professor of Machine Intelligence at Chalmers Institute of Technology, Sweden. His main research interest is AI for science. He originated the idea of a “Robot Scientist” (aka self-driving lab): integrating AI and laboratory robotics to physically implement closed-loop scientific discovery.

His Robot Scientist “Adam” was the first machine to autonomously discover scientific knowledge. “Eve” is currently searching for drugs against neglected tropical diseases. He is building “Genesis”, a Robot Scientist designed to automate eukaryotic systems biology. He is a founder of the Nobel Turing Challenge: to build a machine able to do Nobel prize quality scientific research autonomously.