Keynote speakers

We have invited several interesting keynote speakers, who will share their broad perspective and expert opinion on what it takes to strengthen or empower data driven life sciences through a variety of initiatives. The following keynote speakers have been invited:

 

Modeling safety in toxicology: designing a virtual human platform for safety assessment by Anne Kienhuis - Senior scientist at RIVM, Programme co-lead NWA-VHP4Safety.

Dr. Anne Kienhuis is a senior scientist at RIVM. She is an expert in the field of alternatives to animal experimentation in toxicology and innovative approaches for the safety assessment of chemicals and pharmaceuticals. She is the vice coordinator science of the NWA-ORC project Virtual Human Platform for Safety Assessment (VHP4Safety). This project aims to determine the safety of chemicals and pharmaceuticals for human health based solely on human biology, thereby integrating innovations in data science, human tissue culture models and transition management.

 

Advancing crop resilience for durable agriculture by Guido van den Ackerveken - Professor of Translational Plant Biology at Utrecht University, programme lead of the LTP Plant-XR and the CROP-XR virtual institute

Why are plants susceptible to infection and how do pathogens manipulate their host to cause plant disease? These questions are central in the research of the Van den Ackerveken lab. Their interest is foremost in fundamental science to understand the molecular processes that occur during infection of plants by pathogenic microorganisms. On the plant side, they study susceptibility genes that, when mutated, make plants more resistant to pathogen infection. From the viewpoint of pathogens, our research is focussed on identifying effector proteins, and aimed at understanding how the manipulate host cell processes to make plants more susceptible to infection. An equally important part of their research is aimed at application of our knowledge and results to make plants resistant to diseases. In their laboratory they study downy mildew diseases of the model plant Arabidopsis, but also of the crop plants lettuce and spinach. They collaborate extensively with the plant breeding industry to make the translation from fundamental knowledge to application in durable and environmentally-friendly agriculture.

 

 

 

 

Avoiding garbage in, garbage out in multi-omics approaches towards impact by Alain van Gool - Professor Personalized Healthcare, Radboudumc and lead PI of Netherlands X-omics Initiative.

Alain van Gool is professor Personalized Healthcare at the Radboud university medical center, with a strong passion in the application of biomarkers in translational medicine and personalized healthcare. Alain has worked in academia, pharmaceutical industries, applied research organisations and university medical centers, where he has been leading technology-based biomarker laboratories, cross-functional expert teams, therapeutic project teams and public-private consortia, many of which were focused on the discovery, development and implementation of translational biomarkers in a variety of therapeutic areas. His technical expertise resides most strongly in molecular profiling (various Omics approaches), analytical biomarker development and applications in translational scientific research.  

Alain thrives to work with specialists to translate basic research to applied science and clinical impact. He coordinates several biomarker/omics/data programs as part of the Translational Metabolic Laboratory including project leader and PI of the Netherlands X-omics Initiative, is Strategic Advisor to the Executive Board of Radboudumc, co-coordinates the Radboudumc Technology Centers, is Chair Biomarker Platform of EATRIS (the European infrastructure for Translational Medicine), was co-initiator of Health-RI (the Netherlands Health Research Infrastructure for Personalized Medicine and Health) and Scientific Lead Technologies of DTL (the Dutch Techcenter for Life Sciences), thus contributing to the organisation and coordination of local, national and European technology infrastructures. 



Bridging lab-based and real-world data for generating evidence-based healthy food solutions by Ben Szilagyi - Vice President Biodata & Translational Sciences at DSM.