Speaker Program

In addition to talks given by invited speakers, the SBHD program includes contributed short talks selected from submitted abstracts and poster sessions. The Anne Heidenthal Prize for Fluorescence Research lecture is presented on June 9. Please note: the schedule is subject to change.

Monday, June 8, 2026

Time	Speaker	Title / Topic
08:30 AM	Registration, Check-In, and Welcome Coffee
09:15 AM	Conference Opening
09:30 AM	Welcome Remarks
Session: Rare Diseases / Hearing and VisionChair: Herbert Levine
09:45 AM	Anne O’Donnell-Luria Broad / MIT & Harvard	Improving Variant Classification for Genomic Medicine Through Evidence Calibration
10:15 AM	Heidi Rehm Broad / MIT & Harvard	Tackling the VUS Problem
10:45 AM	Anne Calof UC Irvine	Developmental Disorders: Understanding the Common Causes of Birth Defect Syndromes: Therapeutic Opportunities for Rare Diseases?
11:15 AM	David P. Corey Harvard Medical School	Cell-Specific Gene Therapy Rescues Hearing in Mouse Models of a Common Hereditary Deafness
11:45 AM	Christian Meyer Duet Biosystems	Rethinking Drug Synergy in the Next Century of Drug Combination Discovery
12:15 PM	LUNCH
Session: Multiomics Integration and AIChair: Clara De Paolis Kaluza
01:30 PM	Peter Sorger Special Speaker Harvard University	Machine Learning and Spatial Profiling to Study the Tissue-Resident Immune System
02:00 PM	Samuel V. Scarpino Special Speaker Northeastern University	Predictability Horizons in Complex Networks and Limits to Artificial Intelligence for Systems Biology
02:30 PM	John Platig Univ. of Virginia	Learning a Splicing Regulatory Logic of RBP Binding
03:00 PM	Hratch Baghdassarian MIT	scLEMBAS: Context-Aware Signaling Pathway Modeling at Single-Cell Resolution
03:15 PM	Coffee Break
Session: Computational BiologyChair: Eduardo Sontag
03:45 PM	Sarah Groves University of Virginia	Transitions and Dynamics of a Mitotic Condensate
04:00 PM	Katy Börner Indiana University	Endothelial Cell Environments Across Organs in Spatially Resolved Omics Data
04:30 PM	Arthur D. Lander UC Irvine	Learning from Single Cell Data: What are we Missing?
05:00 PM	Welcome Cocktail Hour and Poster Session
06:00 PM	Conference Dinner

Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Time	Speaker	Title / Topic
09:00 AM	Welcome Coffee
09:15 AM	Opening Remarks by Carmen Sceppa, Dean of the Bouvé College of Health Sciences
Session: NeurodegenerationChair: Hyunju Kim
09:30 AM	Leroy Hood Special Speaker Phenome Health	Multiomics Integration and AI (of data-driven individual health and peptide drug discovery)
10:00 AM	Christian Meisel BIH at Charité	Sensors, Wearables, AI: Opportunities and Challenges for a New Era of Neurology
10:30 AM	Bin Zhang Mount Sinai, New York	Multiomic Network Models Reveal Convergent Pathways and Therapeutic Targets in Alzheimer’s Disease
Session: Multiomics Integration and AIChair: Clara De Paolis Kaluza
10:45 AM	Yoseph Barash Univ. of Pennsylvania	Deep Generative Models for RNA Processing Prediction and Design
11:15 AM	Peter Castaldi Harvard Medical School	Long Read Sequencing and Interpretable AI Models Reveal Principles of Nonsense-Mediated RNA Decay
11:45 AM	Ali R. Zomorrodi MGH / Harvard Medical School	BiomeGPT: A Foundation Model For The Human Gut Microbiome
Session: EpidemiologyChair: Hyunju Kim
12:00 PM	Saskia Trump BIH at Charité	Epigenetic Alterations Acquired During Acute COVID-19 Persist as Long-Term Transcriptional Dysregulation in Airway Epithelium
12:30 PM	LUNCH
Session: CancerChair: Tania Konry
01:45 PM	Galit Lahav Harvard University	Therapy Guided by Protein Dynamics in Single Cells
02:15 PM	Herbert Levine Northeastern University	The Role of Epigenetics in Cancer Progression
02:45 PM	Anne Heidenthal Prize Sponsored by Chroma	Anne Heidenthal Prize for Fluorescence Research: Award Lecture (Presented by Georg Draude, Chroma Technology)
03:15 PM	Poster Session and Coffee
Session: Cancer (continued)Chair: Tania Konry
04:15 PM	Melissa Bondy Stanford University	A Systems Biology Approach to Brain Tumors: Multi-Omics, Histopathology, and Patient Outcomes
04:45 PM	Gennaro Gambardella TIGEM	ESMRank: Learning-to-Rank Prediction of Protein Variant Effects from Integrated Mutational Landscapes
05:00 PM	John Lowengrub UC Irvine	A collective and non-mutational transition governs the development of chronic myeloid leukemia
05:15 PM	Poster Session (5:15 – 6:15 PM)

Wednesday, June 10, 2026

Time	Speaker	Title / Topic
09:00 AM	Welcome Coffee
09:15 AM	Opening Remarks
Session: Translational Research and R&D in Biotech and PharmaChair: Zara Muradali
09:30 AM	Douglas Lauffenburger Special Speaker MIT	Systems Biology Approach to Preclinical/Clinical Translation
10:00 AM	Usama Fayyad Northeastern University	Building Bridges Between the Industry and Academia for AI and Life Sciences R&D
10:30 AM	Tania Konry Northeastern University	From Immune Function to Predictive AI: A Biotech-AI Platform for Immunotherapy Response
11:00 AM	Tamar Thompson Alexion Pharmaceuticals	How AI Shapes the Patient, Advocacy Group, and Access Environment in Rare Disease
11:30 AM	Jake Feala Flagship Pioneering	Closing the Loop Between AI and Reality
12:00 PM	Ajay Yekkirala Superluminal Medicines	Blending People and Machines to Discover Medicines
12:30 PM	Closing Remarks and End of Conference

This year’s highlights

On Monday evening, we warmly welcome our participants to our traditional conference dinner at the Atrium of ISEC, Northeastern University. You can expect a three-course meal, complimentary drinks, and music — a perfect opening for networking.