Our programme committee carefully selects the speakers for the scientific programme. They operate at the heart of the Dutch Life sciences and make sure to cover all programme tracks. In the run-up to the conference, we ask them to elaborate on their choice of speakers and what they look forward to at NWO Life 2024.
Rob Finn
Rob Finn is the lead of the Microbiome Informatics team at EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute. This team produces MGnify, a world leading resource for the functional and taxonomic analysis and archiving of microbiome derived sequence data. In addition to making large numbers of datasets available that have been processed in a systematic way, the resource allows scientists to upload their own data, either privately or publicly, and assemble and analyse their data. The MGnify resource contains one of the largest public collections of assembled metagenomes, which have been used to derive billions of proteins. More recently, MGnify has also started to produce biome-specific catalogues of metagenome assembled genomes, derived from the aforementioned assemblies and community contributions. Collectively, these are providing new insights into the microbial diversity found in a range of environments.
During NWO Life2024 Rob will speak about cells: Design of experiments and machine learning to optimize microbial cell factories
I believe that he will provide a visionary talk on how computational data analysis can accelerate discoveries in microbiome science and beyond.
Behind the speaker
We asked programme committee member Marnix Medema who he invited to speak at NWO Life2024 and why. We also asked him about NWO Life in general.
Who is Marnix Medema? 'I am a professor of bioinformatics at Wageningen University & Research, where my group develops and applies methods for omics-based analysis of the chemical language of life, with a focus on host-microbiome interactions.'
Why did you invite Rob Finn?
‘I have invited Dr. Rob Finn from the European Bioinformatics Institute to speak because he is a leading scientist in the field of computational analysis of protein and microbiome data. He has long been the project leader of the Pfam protein domain database, a resource that is used by tens of thousands of scientists worldwide. Now, he leads the EMBL-EBI’s microbiome informatics team, and with his team has developed the MGnify resource that provides rich functionality to analyse metagenomic and metatranscriptomics data.'
Why should participants come to NWO Life2024? 'The broad nature of the conference means that you are likely to be surprised and come back with new ideas, instead of always hearing the same old stories at the same field-specific conferences. Moreover, all these people work close by, so this gives a great opportunity to develop new cross-disciplinary collaborations.'
What are you most looking forward to? 'I am very curious to learn more about how science and art can meet to touch the soul and communicate important concepts that are worth contemplating.’
