Programme
Tuesday, August 25th, 2026
Registration
OPENING OF THE CONFERENCE
Anniversary Keynote talk
Moderator Andres Metspalu
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”
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
Moderator Andres Metspalu
Matt Brown
King’s College London, UK
“Designing Genomics for Prevention, Equity, and Impact: England’s Life-Course Approach”
Emma Duncan
Professor 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
André Uitterlinden
Professor Complex Genetics, Internal Medicine Dept. Erasmus University MC, Head Laboratory for Population Genomics, Netherlands
"The Genome of Europe: Towards using Genetic Information in Health Care and Prevention"
Lene CividanesHead of Division at the Danish Health Data Authority, Denmark
"Five years with the Danish National Genome Center"
Alexandre ReymondCenter for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
"Variable expressivity, reduced penetrance, pleiotropy and inheritance modes"
Coffee break
Anniversary session III
Moderator Andres Metspalu
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 Illig
CEO of the Hannover Unified Biobank, Hannover Medical School, Germany
"Biobanking as a basis for integration of molecular data in complex diseases."
Michaela Mayrhofer
Papillon 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.
Moderator Kaur Alasoo
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
“A 96-Plex Pharmacotranscriptomic Platform to Decode Drug Resistance at Single Cell Level in Cancers”
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 - TBA
Lunch Break
Population genomics
Molly Przeworski (Keynote talk)
Alan H. Kempner Professor of Biological Sciences Columbia University
“Why do germline mutation rates vary among humans?”
Hakhamanesh MostafaviAssistant Professor Center for Human Genetics and Genomics Department of Population Health NYU Grossman School of Medicine
“What genes do genetic association studies discover?”
Guy JacobsAssistant Professor in Human Evolutionary Genetics and Bioinformatics, University of Cambridge, UK
“From hosts to microbes: a genomic lens across social networks, lifestyle and history in rural Indonesia”
Speaker IV - TBACoffee 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"