Emmanuelle Charpentier, Germany

Lecture title: TRANSFORMING LIFE SCIENCES THROUGH THE POWER OF MICROBIOLOGY: THE EXAMPLE OF GENE EDITING WITH CRISPR

Emmanuelle Charpentier is a French microbiologist, geneticist and biochemist. She is founder, scientific and managing director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin. She is co-founder of CRISPR Therapeutics and ERS Genomics with Rodger Novak and Shaun Foy. She has received numerous prestigious international awards and honors, and is an elected member of national and international scientific academies. More information about Emmanuelle is available at http://www.emmanuelle-charpentier.org/

Craig Venter, USA

Lecture title: SYNTHETIC GENOMES AND CELLS TO UNDERSTAND CELLULAR SYSTEMS

J. CRAIG VENTER, Ph.D., Founder, CEO and Chairman, the J. Craig Venter Institute, is renowned for his contributions in genomics including sequencing the first draft human genome, the first complete diploid human genome and construction of the first synthetic bacterial cell.

He and his teams’ current research programs include continued analysis of the human genome with a focus on the intersection of the genome and all physical characteristics and how this relates to disease and health; synthetic biology advances; infectious diseases; and discovering and understanding genetic diversity in the world’s oceans.

Venter is a recipient of the 2008 National Medal of Science and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of The Voyage of Sorcerer II: The Expedition That Unlocked the Secrets of the Ocean’s Microbiome (Harvard University Press, 2023), Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life (Viking, 2013) and A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life (Viking, 2007).