Chief Information Officer and Chief Scientist (Informatics), US Food and Drug Administration (USA)
Title: Science and Technology at FDA
6:15 PM Sunday

Eric is currently Chief Information Officer and Chief Scientist (Informatics) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Eric is responsible for modernizing and enhancing the IT capabilities as well as the in silico scientific capabilities at FDA. Eric leads a staff of over 500 federal employees and manages an annual technology portfolio of over $0.5 billion. Current program focus includes the technological modernization of the FDA inspectorate, next generation drug and food safety programs and the development of a knowledge ecosystem across FDA. Eric is also the co-chair of the Scientific Computing Architectural Domain at HHS and shares the responsibility for growing and leveraging scientific computing and informatics capabilities across HHS.

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Howard Hughes Investigator and Associate Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development at UC - Berkeley (USA)
Title: Open Science and the Future of Genomics
8:00 AM Monday
•  Member of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Life Sciences Division
•  Co-founded the Public Library of Science (PLoS) in 2001
•  Studies how the genomic sequences that control gene expression function and evolve. The team is driven by a desire to understand the molecular basis of organismal diversity, and the belief that many differences in physiology, morphology and behavior arise from changes in gene regulation.

Director, General Sars Centre for Marine Molecular Biology (NORWAY)
Title: What Happened to the Genome of Vertebrate Closest Living Relatives?
9:45 AM Monday

Daniel Chourrout has a PhD in Genetics from the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris and is since 1997 Director of the Sars International Centre for Marine Molecular Biology in Bergen (Norway) and Professor at the University of Bergen. The Sars Centre is an official partner of E.M.B.L. and mostly involved to the evolution of animal diversity, using a variety of marine model systems. His personal research is on the rapid evolution of tunicates, sister-group of vertebrates, with emphasis on changes of genome organization. Before moving to Norway, Daniel Chourrout was heading the fish genetics lab of I.N.R.A. (Jouy en Josas, France) and mainly focused on genome manipulations in rainbow trout and medaka.

Professor, Department of Archaeology, Durham University, (UK)
Title: A New Evolutionary Population Genetic Theory of Plant and Animal Domestication
9:30 AM Wednesday

Professor Larson runs the Durham Evolution & Ancient DNA (DEAD) Lab, based in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. His primary interests are rooted in evolution, domestication, and the origins of civilization and his lab likes to ask big questions about the process of domestication and the patterns of human movement across the Old and New Worlds. Though his approach is primarily interdisciplinary, the datasets generated in the DEAD lab consist mostly of modern and ancient DNA extracted from modern and archaeological specimens.

Investigator, HHMI, Professor, UCLA Department of Molecular, Cell and Development Biology, Los Angeles (USA)
Title: Genetics and Genomics of DNA Methylation Control in Plants
8:00 AM Tuesday

Steve Jacobsen is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Professor of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles.  His research interests center on mechanisms of epigenetic inheritance in plants, and are focused on the genetics and genomics of DNA methylation.   Jacobsen has received the Beckman and Searle young investigator awards and in 2011 was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Professor, University of Michigan (USA)
Title: Large Scale Genetic Association Studies in Humans
8:45 AM Tuesday
•  Center for Statistical Genetics, Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan
•  Felix Moore Collegiate Professor of Biostatistics
•  Research focuses on the development of statistical tools for the identification and study of genetic variants important in human disease. Developed software currently used in thousands of gene-mapping projects worldwide 

Scientific Director, University of Udine, Istituto di Genomica Applicata (ITALY)
Title:  Structural Hypervariation and the Plant Pan-genomes.
8:00 AM Wednesday
•  Scientific Director of the Institute of Genome Applications in Udine
•  Associate Editor of Theoretical and Applied Genetics and Tree Genetics and Genomes
•  Research programme is currently focusing on genome analysis in plants, including physical mapping, genome sequencing and resequencing and genome evolution studies, and on sequence diversity analysis and association mapping. 

Professor, University of Minnesota, Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics (USA)
Title:  Genomics Approaches to Identifying and Exploiting Diversity in Barley
8:45 AM Wednesday

Gary J. Muehlbauer is a Professor and Department Head in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Muehlbauer also holds the Endowed Chair of Molecular Genetics Applied to Crop Improvement in the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. His work is focused on developing and utilizing genomics tools for gene discovery and crop improvement. Currently, he is the co-director of the USDA-NIFA funded Triticeae Coordinated Agricultural Project.