Gene Forum 2025 will take place on September 9th and 10th in Tartu

The Institute of Genomics of the University of Tartu and the Estonian Genome Foundation cordially invite you to The 24rd International Gene Forum (www.geneforum.ee), the leading scientific conference on genetics and genomics in the Baltic region since 2000. The event will take place at the the Estonian National Museum on September 9-10.

The interdisciplinary program of the conference will cover scientific discoveries and future trends. This year’s diverse agenda includes topics such as:

• Medical Genetics
• Reproductive Genetics
• Population Genomics
• Evolutionary Genomics
• Disease Mechanisms
• Microbiome
• Ageing

Register for the event on Gene Forum website.

Programme

Tuesday, September 9^th, 2025   

08:30–09:00 Registration

9:00–9:15 Opening ceremony

9:15–9:50 Keynote

Eimear Kenny, Endowed Chair and Professor for Genomic Health at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, USA. “Population genetics in an era of genomic health”

09:50–10:45 Complex genomic approaches

Moderator Lili Milani

• Olli Pietiläinen, Group Leader and senior scientist, Helsinki Institute of Life Science, Neuroscience Center, University of Helsinki, Finland. “Using multimodal, longitudinal data to explore clinical impact of genetic variants in psychotic disorders”
• Simone Rubinacci, FIMM-EMBL Group Leader at University of Helsinki and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, USA. “Haplotype-informed methods to uncover novel disease mechanisms”

10:45–11:20 Coffee break

11:20–12:40 Reproproductive genetics

Moderator Triin Laisk

• Katherine Ruth, Lecturer in Clinical and Biomedical Sciences, University of Exeter, United Kingdom. “Insights from genome-wide analyses of female reproductive ageing”
• Pol Sole-Navais, Group leader at the Wallenberg Laboratory, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. “Genetic susceptibility to shorter gestational duration and preterm birth”
• Taru Tukiainen, Senior Researcher, University of Helsinki, Finland. “Genetic insights into the lifelong health of women and children”

12:40-14:00 Lunch Break

14:00–14:55 Disease mechanisms

Moderator Kaur Alasoo

• Hilary Martin, Group Leader in Human Genetics, Wellcome Sanger Institute, United Kingdom. “Insights into the genetics of neurodevelopmental conditions and traits from large British cohorts”
• Stephen Burgess, MRC Biostatistics Unit, Univeristy of Cambridge, United Kingdom. “Mendelian randomization: How can genetics guide the design of clinical trials?”

14:55–15:30 Coffee break

15:30–16:25 Ageing

Moderator Pärt Peterson

• Juulia Jylhävä, Senior Research Fellow and Group leader at Tampere University, Finland and Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. “Decoding biological aging and frailty through genomic methods”
• Joris Deelen, Associate professor at Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands. “Metabolomics-based biomarkers of ageing; how to implement epidemiological findings into clinically relevant settings”

16:25–16:50 Poster session presentations

Moderator Triin Laisk

• Poster presentation I / TBA
• Poster presentation II / TBA
• Poster presentation III / TBA

16:50– … Poster session

19:30 Dinner at Estonian National Museum

Wednesday, September 10^th, 2024.

9:00–10:20 Medical Genetics meets Big Data

Moderator Sander Pajusalu

• Nicola Whiffin, Associate Professor, Big Data Institute, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. “Small nuclear RNAs in rare disease”
• Peter Krawitz, Professor at Institute for Genomic Statistics and Bioinformatics of the University Hospital Bonn and the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany. “GestaltMatcher: medical image analysis with AI in rare diseases”
• Aleš Maver, MD, PhD, Clinical institute of genomic medicine, UMCL Ljubljana, Slovenia. “The power of small – how Slovenia used genomics to transform diagnosis of genetic diseases”

10:20–10:55 Coffee break

11:00–12:00 Technological advances in the forefront of science

Moderator Lili Milani

• Neil Ward, VP and General Manager of PacBio for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “Comprehensive variant detection with HiFi sequencing”
• Senior Technical Sales Specialist, Element Biosciences. “High-Dimensional Biology: Advancing Single-Cell and Spatial Multiomics.with AVITI24TM”
• Gold sponsor presentation III / TBA

12:15-13:30 Lunch break

13:30-14:50 Human origins

Moderator Michael Dannemann

• Pontus Skoglund, The Francis Crick Institute, United Kingdom. “Ancient genome evolution in humans and bacteria”
• Mari Sepp, Postdoctoral researcher, Heidelberg University, Germany. “Tracing cerebellum development and evolution with single-cell genomics”
• Martin Kuhlwilm, Assistant Professor, Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Austria. “Understanding human uniqueness using hominin and primate genomic diversity”

14:50–15:30 Coffee break

15:30-16:50 Microbiome

Moderator Elin Org

• Tove Fall, Professor of Molecular Epidemiology, Uppsala University, Sweden. “Genome-wide association study of the microbiome composition in four Nordic cohorts”
• Rob Finn, Section Head & Senior Scientist, EMBL-EBI, UK. “Exploring microbial diversity across scales and biomes”
• H Bjørn Nielsen, Chief Scientific Officer at Cmbio, Copenhagen, Denmark. “Status and Perspective on the Microbiome Field”

 16:50–17:20  Closing remarks and announcing the recipients of Artur Lind Scholarship