• Christophe Dessimoz, Executive Director, SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Switzerland
• Simone de Montmollin, National Councillor, President of the Foundation Council of the SIB, Switzerland
• Audrey Leuba, Rector of the University of Geneva, Switzerland
• Anne Hiltpold, President of the Geneva Canton, State Councillor, Switzerland
• Guy Parmelin, President of the Swiss government, Switzerland

10h-10h05: Christophe Dessimoz, Executive Director, SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
10h06-10h11: Simone de Montmollin, National Councillor, President of the Foundation Council of the SIB
10h12-10h17: Audrey Leuba, Rector of the University of Geneva
10h18-10h25: Anne Hiltpold, President of the Geneva Canton, State Councillor
10h26-10h36: Guy Parmelin, President of the Swiss government
10h37-11h00: Dance performance "If data could breathe”

• Jeremy Farrar

Jeremy Farrar is the Assistant Director-General for Health Promotion, Disease Prevention and Care at the World Health Organization (WHO). He previously served as WHO Chief Scientist (2023–2025) and was Director of the Wellcome Trust (2013–2023). Before that, he led the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City (1996–2013). Trained in neurology and infectious diseases, he holds a PhD in immunology from the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences, the US National Academies, and the European Molecular Biology Organization. He has received major international honours, including the Queen’s 2018 New Year knighthood and the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun (2020).

• Peter Maccallum

• Frédérique Lisacek
• Christian von Mering
• Paul Thomas
• Knut Reinert

A tribute to members of our scientific community

Honouring the memory of:
Amos Bairoch
Peer Bork
Phil Bourne
Craig Venter

• Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas

Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas is an associate professor in the Department of Computational Biology at the University of Lausanne and a Group Leader at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Switzerland. She studied biology and physics at the University of Geneva and obtained her PhD in population genetics and computational biology from UC Berkeley under Montgomery Slatkin. After a postdoc with Eske Willerslev in Copenhagen, she returned to Switzerland as an Assistant Professor at the University of Bern. Her research focuses on theoretical population genetics and the analysis of ancient DNA. Her lab develops computational tools and applies large-scale genomic analyses to understand how humans colonized the world and adapted to new environments.

• Stephen Quake

Stephen Quake is the Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at Stanford University. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to science and is one of only two dozen scientists elected to all three National Academies. Previously he was the Head of Science at Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (2022-2025), founding co-president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub (2016-2022), investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (2006-2016), and Professor at the California Institute of Technology (1996-2005).

• Aleksandra Walczak

Aleksandra Walczak received her PhD in physics at the University of California, San Diego, working on models of stochastic gene expression. After a graduate fellowship at Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP), she was a Princeton Center for Theoretical Science Fellow, focusing on applying information theory to signal processing. Currently she is a Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) research director at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, interested in collective behavior, fly development and statistical descriptions of the immune system. She was awarded the “Grand Prix Jacques Herbrand de l’Académie des sciences" in 2014, the bronze medal of CNRS in 2015, the American Physical Society Fellowship, the Prix Jean Ricard of the French Physics Society in 2021 and the silver medal of CNRS in 2024. She was elected to the French National Academy of Sciences in 2024.

• Christophe Dessimoz, Executive Director, SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Switzerland