Laura Cantini is tenured researcher in CNRS, chair in the Paris Institute of AI (PRAIRIE) and G5 junior group leader heading the Machine Learning for Integrative Genomics group. Mathematician by training, Laura works at the interphase of machine learning/AI and genomics. Due to the advent of single-cell high-throughput technologies, multiple large-scale quantitative measurements, a.k.a. omics, can be accessed for the same cells. Laura’s lab focuses on the development of machine learning and AI methods able to co-analyze the numerous available single-cell omics data and translate them into actionable biological knowledge. The work of Laura Cantini has been recognized by multiple grants and awards, including the ERC StG, the Sanofi iTech award and the bronze medal of CNRS.

Talk title: Multi-modal learning for single-cell multi-omics integration

Sarah Cohen-Boulakia is a Full Professor in computer science at Université Paris-Saclay and a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). Her research lies at the intersection of data science and bioinformatics, focusing on scientific workflows, provenance, and the reproducibility of computational experiments. She has worked for over twenty years in multidisciplinary collaborations with biologists and clinicians, actively involved in initiatives promoting transparency in research, including the co-founding of the French Reproducible Research Network. She received the CNRS Silver Medal in 2024.

Talk title: Reproducibility by Design in Bioinformatics: Research challenges and opportunities

Christophe Dessimoz is Executive Director of the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and Associate Professor at the University of Lausanne. Beyond his research in comparative genomics, he advocate for the recognition, sustainability, and strategic governance of biodata resources. His recent policy-oriented work emphasises the role of curated databases and knowledgebases in enabling FAIR data and AI-ready life science infrastructure.

Credits : Nicolas Righetti/Lundi13

Talk title: Open biological databases as strategic infrastructure: from research to competitiveness and sovereignty

Daniel Jost is CNRS Research Professor and group leader at Laboratoire de Biologie et Modélisation de la Cellule at ENS de Lyon. His group (Physical Biology of Chromatin) addresses fundamental questions on the spatio-temporal dynamics of eukaryotic chromosomes using biophysical and computational modeling, in close collaboration with experimentalists.  Their objective is to characterize the universal first principles driving chromatin folding and regulation, while contextualizing their approaches to specific problems of 3D genomics.

Talk title: Deciphering the structure-function relationship of chromatin: from experiments to modeling and back

Hugues Roest Crollius obtained a PhD from UCL in London, studying at the ICRF and at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. He then joined Jean Weissenbach at Genoscope to analyse the genome of the pufferfish Tetraodon nigroviridis, He established his team at the Institut de Biologie de l’ENS in Paris in 2004 to study genome evolution using bioinformatics approaches. He also now co-leads the ATLASea PEPR, which aims at sequencing thousands of marine genomes.

Talk title: The evolution of 568 vertebrate genomes during 400 million years

Judith Zaugg is Professor of Molecular Medicine at the University of Basel, where she leads the Molecular and Computational Hematology–Immunology group at the Department of Biomedicine. She trained in chemical biology at ETH Zürich, obtained her PhD in computational biology from EMBL-EBI and the University of Cambridge, and completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University before starting her research group at EMBL in 2014. Her research integrates single-cell and spatial genomics with computational modelling to uncover gene-regulatory mechanisms underlying cellular interactions and disease processes, particularly in hematologic and immune disorders.

Talk title: Understanding disease mechanisms through the lens of gene regulation at single-cell and spatial resolution