The 3rd International Online Conference on Genes

Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, USA;Dr Ehrlich is Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, and Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Drexel University College of Medicine (DUCoM) in Philadelphia, PA, USA. His scientific career has been characterized by his integration of technologies and ideas across a broad spectrum of academic and clinical disciplines and the continuous development of advances that span a range of disciplines including diagnostics, informatics, artificial intelligence, infectious diseases, genetic diseases, wound healing and evolutionary biology. Dr Ehrlich is an elected a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology based on his works in the development of molecular diagnostics, genomic technologies, and evolutionary modelling of chronic bacterial pathogenesis. He is also one of the foundational class of fellows for the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS). He has served as a member of the American Society of Microbiology’s Distinguished Lecture (ASMDL) panel and on its subcommittee for elections.

Unit of Microbiome Science and Biotechnology, Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy;Silvia Turroni is Associate Professor in Chemistry and Biotechnology of Fermentation, at the Unit of Microbiome Science and Biotechnology, Dept. Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna (Bologna, Italy). She has over 15 years of experience in the compositional and functional profiling of the human microbiome and the exploration of its impact on health. She has strong expertise in next-generation sequencing technologies, including 16S rRNA gene sequencing and omics approaches, i.e., metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and, more recently, culturomics, as well as in microbiome-host interaction studies in ex vivo models.

Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, USA;Dr. Qin has 20 years of independent research experience in Biostatistics and Bioinformatics. His research covers Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, Statistical Genetics as well as Computational Biology. Recently, his research expanded to include Machine Learning, AI, Big Data Analytics, and their applications to translational and precision medicine. Dr. Qin actively collaborates with basic scientists and clinicians, contributing to the understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying cancer and complex diseases.

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, USA;Dr. Yang is currently Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology and Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA. She serves as the Vice Chair of the Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology Ph.D. program and the Vice Chair of the Computational & Systems Biology Undergraduate Program. Her lab specializes in developing computational tools to integrate multiomics data (genetic, transcriptome, epigenome, proteome, metabolome, and microbiome) and model multitissue multiomics networks underlying complex traits such as sex differences and diseases such as cardiometabolic and brain disorders. Her experiences in both industry (Senior Research Scientist at Rosetta Inpharmatics/Merck & Co) and academia (Principal Scientist and Director of Systems Biology at Sage Bionetworks; faculty at UCLA) enable a broad research portfolio from computational tool development to disease mechanism investigations to drug discovery using multiomics computational approaches.

Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, Department of Pathology and Karmanos Cancer Institute, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, USA;Dr. Heng proposed the Genome Architecture Theory, a new conceptual framework for genomics and evolution, which led to the platforms to study chromosomal instability in cancer. He is the author of Debating Cancer: The Paradox in Cancer Research and Genome Chaos: Rethinking Genetics, Evolution, and Molecular Medicine. He discovered the two-phased evolution, which departs from the traditional gradual Darwinian model, and demonstrated that genome chaos plays a critical role in information self-creation through large-scale genome reorganization. His concept of karyotype coding—representing system-level inheritance—stands in contrast to gene-based, part-level inheritance and provides a new perspective for pharmacogenomics. In cancer, genome instability and karyotype-level evolution contribute to rapid drug resistance, underscoring the need to study evolution-based mechanisms to guide future pharmacogenomics. (PMID: 31737054; PMID: 34195196; PMID: 39273111).