Keynote speakers

Biography
Stephen Quake is the Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering and Professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University and is co-President of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. He received a B.S. in Physics and M.S. in Mathematics from Stanford University in 1991 and a doctorate in Theoretical Physics from the University of Oxford in 1994. Quake has invented many measurement tools for biology, including new DNA sequencing technologies that have enabled rapid analysis of the human genome and microfluidic automation that allows scientists to efficiently isolate individual cells and decipher their genetic code. Quake is also well known for inventing new diagnostic tools, including the first non-invasive prenatal test for Down syndrome and other aneuploidies. His test is rapidly replacing risky invasive approaches such as amniocentesis, and millions of women each year now benefit from this approach. His innovations have helped to radically accelerate the pace of biology and have made medicine safer by replacing invasive biopsies with simple blood tests.

Biography
Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas is an associate professor in the Department of Computational Biology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She studied biology and physics as an undergraduate at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She then did her PhD in population genetics and computational biology at the University of California, Berkeley, (USA) under the supervision of Montgomery Slatkin. Before returning to Switzerland as an assistant professor at the University of Bern, Anna-Sapfo did a postdoc at the University of Copenhagen with Eske Willerslev. Her current research focuses on theoretical population genetics, with a particular emphasis on the analysis of ancient DNA. Her lab combines the development of computational tools with large-scale data analysis, such as high-throughput genome sequencing, to better understand how humans colonized the world and adapted to the new environments they encountered.

Biography
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 KITP, she was a Princeton Center for Theoretical Science Fellow, focusing on applying information theory to signal processing. Currently she is a 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.