Programme
Tuesday, August 25th, 2026
Registration
OPENING OF THE CONFERENCE
Anniversary Keynote talks
Marco Marsella
Director for “Digital, EU4Health and Health Systems Modernisation” at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE)
“Health Data and innovation as pillars of the European Health Union”
Walter RicciardiFull Professor of Hygiene at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery and Director of the School of Public Health of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy. Chair of the Mission Board on Cancer (European Commission), Chair of the European Mission Board on Vaccination.
“The need for scientific leadership in challenging times”
Coffee break
Anniversary Keynote talk
Moderator Andres Metspalu
Sir Peter Donnelly
FMedSci, HonFIA
CEO and Co-Founder, Genomics Ltd,
Emeritus Professor, University of Oxford, UK
“Implementing Genomic Prevention: how genomics can power a new prevention-first agenda for healthcare”
Anniversary session I
Matt Brown
King’s College London, UK
“Designing Genomics for Prevention, Equity, and Impact: England’s Life-Course Approach”
Emma DuncanProfessor of Clinical Endocrinology at King’s College London, UK
"The intersection of common and rare disease genetics in bone disorders"
Lunch Break
Anniversary session II
Moderator Andres Metspalu
André Uitterlinden
Professor Complex Genetics, Internal Medicine Dept. Erasmus University MC,
Head Laboratory for Population Genomics, Netherlands
"Genome of Europe: a multinational reference and beyond"
Lene Cividanes
Head of Division at the Danish Health Data Authority, Denmark
"The story of the Danish National Genome Center"
Alexandre Reymond
Center for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
"Variable expressivity, reduced penetrance, pleiotropy and inheritance modes"
Coffee break
Anniversary session III
Jens K. Habermann
Director General BBMRI-ERIC, Board certified Human Geneticist, Leave of Absence Professorship University of Lübeck, Germany
"How BBMRI-ERIC structures the European Research Area on examples of Cancer Mission, EOSC Federation and Personalized Medicine"
Thomas IlligCEO of the Hannover Unified Biobank, Hannover Medical School, Germany
"Biobanking as a basis for integration of molecular data in complex diseases."
Michaela MayrhoferPapillon Pathways and Medical University of Graz, Austria
"Navigating Complexity in Europe’s Health Future: An Ethical Perspective"
POSTER SESSION presentations
TBA
POSTER SESSION
Dinner at Estonian National Museum
Announcing the winner of Artur Lind Scholarship
Wednesday, August 26th, 2026
Human genome complexity
Moderator Lili Milani
Evan Eichler (Keynote talk)
Department of Genome Sciences and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
“Complex structural variation and disease”
Pille Hallast
Research Scientist, The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, USA
“Why the Y? Long-read assemblies and new insights into diversity and mutation in complex genomic regions”
Maarja Jõeloo
Postdoctoral research fellow, Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), University of Helsinki, Finland
“Integrating structural variants and tandem repeats into biobank-scale association studies”
Coffee break
Advances in single cell technology.
Nicole Soranzo (Keynote talk)
Head of Genomics Research Centre, Human Technopole, Italy
“A population-scale single-cell resource of 10M peripheral blood cells with embedded medical data in a multiethnic setting”
Daniela Ungureanu University of Oulu, Finland
Minna Kaikkonen-Määttä
Professor of Cardiovascular Genomics and Director of the Single Cell Genomics Core at University of Eastern Finland.
"Decoding the Cellular and Spatial Architecture of Genetic Risk in Coronary Artery Disease"
Spekaer IV - TBALunch Break
Population genomics
Moderator Michael Dannemann
Molly Przeworski (Keynote talk)
Alan H. Kempner Professor of Biological Sciences
Columbia University
“Why do germline mutation rates vary among humans?”
Hakhamanesh Mostafavi
Assistant Professor
Center for Human Genetics and Genomics
Department of Population Health
NYU Grossman School of Medicine
“What genes do genetic association studies discover?”
Guy Jacobs
Assistant Professor in Human Evolutionary Genetics and Bioinformatics, University of Cambridge, UK
Speaker IV - TBA
Coffee break
Microbiome
Moderator Elin Org
Rob Knight (Keynote talk)
Wolfe Family Endowed Chair in Microbiome Research at Rady Children's Director, Center for Microbiome Innovation, and Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering, and Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, UC San Diego Senior Visiting Fellow, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study
Jeroen Raes
KU Leuven, Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Transplantation, Rega Institute for Medical Research and VIB, Center for Microbiology, Belgium
“Quantitative microbiome profiling in health and disease"
Yingyuan Fu
Professor, Department of Genetics, University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands
"Microbial genetic diversity in human health and disease"