Genome Science UK 2026

Manchester University

Agenda

Mobile phone compatible agenda

Monday, 14th September 2026

Day 1 — Room G.41

Time Session / Talk
13:00–13:30 Registration, Lunch & Networking
13:30–14:30 Keynotes (Chair: Matt Loose)
13.30–14.00 Deciphering the rules of cancer evolution — Samra Turajlić, CRUK Manchester
14.00–14.30 Multi-omic investigation of the tumour microenvironment across scales — Dario Bressan, CRUK Cambridge SPACE
14:30–16:00 Evolving Technologies 1 (Chair: Michael Quail)
14:30–14:55 Illumina; Beyond the Genome with Multiomics — Laura Ingram, Illumina
14:55–15:20 Innovations in HiFi Sequencing — Neil Ward, PacBio
15:20–15:45 From variant discovery to biological insights: Paired NGS and multiomics workflows for understanding genetic disease — Matthew Gow, Element
15:45–15:55 Q5-seq: enabling high-confidence NGS across diverse applications — Maggie Heider, New England Biolabs
16:00–16:30 Coffee Break
16:30–18:15 Single Cell Genomics (Chair: Iain Macaulay & Sally James)
16.30–16.55 Resolving microbial genomes in complex communities at the single-cell level — Johan Henriksson, Umeå University
16.55–17.20 Title to follow — Andrew Beggs, University of Birmingham
17.20–17.30 Beyond inference: measuring cell–cell communication directly — Paul Wylie, Lightcast
17.30–17.40 Genome-wide Mapping of Transcription Start Sites Reveals Alternative TSS Usage during Mammalian Zygotic Genome Activation — Yuchen Shen
17:40–17:50 Expect the Impossible: A new era of discovery with 10x Genomics — Bryan Serrels, 10X Genomics
17:50–18:00 Trekker: A new class of spatial technology for true single-nucleus spatial omics — Daniel Laite, Takara
18:05–19:15 Drinks Reception and Posters

Tuesday, 15th September 2026

Day 2 — 15/09/2026

Time Parallel A Parallel B
08:15–09:15 Genomics Community UK Networking Breakfast - G.06  
08:30–09:20 Tea & Coffee  
09:20–11:00 Plant and Animal Genomics (Chair: Al Darby) Computational Biology and AI (Chair: Sion Bayliss)
09.20–09.45 Multi-omics of germline-restricted chromosomes of passerine birds — Alexander Sang-Jae Suh, Max Planck Institute Pangenome language models — John Lees (EMBL-EBI)
09.45–10.10 Parasitism Islands: the role and regulation of gene organisation in parasitism — Vicky Hunt, University of Bath Application of AI for integration of clinical and genomic data enables precision diagnostics — Sarah Ennis (Southampton)
10.10–10.25 Identifying G-protein Coupled Receptors in Mnemiopsis leidyi using Bioinformatic Approaches — Aidan Pugh NORA: A Nanopore Oncology Reasoning Agent for Evidence Validation in Cell-Free RNA Liquid Biopsy — Somayah Albaradei
10.25–10.40 Developing a transcriptomics toolbox for aquatic animal health — Richard Hill Accelerated genome containment estimation using syncmers — Bede Constantinides
10.40–10.55 Comparative Genomics Reveals the Evolutionary History of Visual Opsins in Hoverflies — Elena Rosca Lineage-Specific Marker Discovery — Sahra Musse
11:00–11:30 Coffee Break  
11:30–13:00 Spatial Genomics (Chair: Sally James) Microbial Genomics (Chair: Lauren Cowley)
11.30–11.55 Decoding leishmaniasis immunopathology through multi-omic analysis — Paul Kaye (University of York) Beyond genomic potential: resolving microbial function in a geothermal community — Sophie Nixon (University of Manchester)
11.55–12.20 Title to follow — Nik Matthews The use of pathogen genomics in public health microbiology — Philip Ashton (University of Oxford)
12.20–12.35 Goodbye, flat biology! Three-dimensional spatial transcriptomics — Julian Ashby Winter is Coming: Detecting Known and Unknown Respiratory Pathogens through Metagenomic Surveillance in the mSCAPE Project — Sam Wilkinson
12.35–12.50 Multimodal Integration of Spatial Omics to Study Prostate Cancer Heterogeneity — Sara Karaoui The Evolution of Epidemic Pseudomonas aeruginosa — Fiona Poulter
12.50–13.05 Integrating spatial and single-cell technologies to deconvolute the heart immune infiltrate during infectious cardiomyopathy — Aleksandra Dabek  
13:05–14:00 Photo, Lunch and Poster Session II  
14:00–15:20 Microbial Communities & Metagenomics (Chair: Nick Loman) Cancer & Ageing (Chair: Ania Piskorz)
14.00–14.25 Doing metagenomics properly (or at least less badly) — Josh Quick (University of Birmingham) Genomics of ageing and cancer — Prof Joao Pedro Magalhaes (University of Birmingham)
14.25–14.50 Microbiome Genomics for Public Health: Sequencing Everything, Deciding Nothing? — Al Darby (University of Liverpool) Title to follow — Dr Richard Mair (CRUK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge)
14.50–15.05 An assessment of cell-based and DNA-based host depletion methods for enhancing genome coverage for pathogen identification in human blood — Emily Rowlands Read-level classification of glioblastoma DNA from nanopore methylation: a naive Bayes classifier benchmarked against ichorCNA — Andrew Gavin
15.05–15.20 Demultiplexing errors as a source of false-positive detections in viral metagenomics — and how to prevent them — Dominika Stepniak (University of Birmingham) Ultra-long sequencing reveals the structural and epigenetic architecture of DUX4-rearranged acute lymphoblastic leukaemia — Steven Knox
15:20–16:00 Coffee Break  
16:00–17:35 Evolutionary (Microbial) Genomics (Chair: Sophie Nixon) Human & Clinical Genomics (Chair: Jon Coxhead)
16.00–16.25 Long-term trends in prokaryotic diversification through geological time — Tom Williams (Bath) Opportunities and challenges in implementation of pharmacogenomics at scale in a national health service — Bill Newman (Manchester Centre for Genomic Medicine – NHS)
16.25–16.50 Secret Lives of Microbial Mobile Genetic Elements — Jamie Hall (Liverpool) Translating genomics into population health benefit and impact for patients and communities — Saskia Sanderson (Kings College London)
16.50–17.05 A Forward Genetics Approach to Investigate Gain-of-Virulence in Zymoseptoria tritici to the Cougar Resistance QTL — Lisa Lamberte Long-read Sequencing in Circulating Tumour DNA (ctDNA) Lung Cancer Liquid Biopsies — Sophie Shaw
17.05–17.20 Title to follow — Danna Gifford Development and Evaluation of a Dual-PLatform Clinical Metagenomics Pipeline for Respiratory Pathogen and Resistome Profiling - Umang Uniyal
17.20–17.35 Title to follow — Matthew Thomas Telomere-to-telomere assembly reveals the molecular architecture of the rare constitutional dicentric chromosome rob(15;21)c — Steven Knox

Conference Dinner, Living Worlds Gallery, Manchester Museum

Wednesday, 16th September 2026

Time Session / Talk
08:30–09:15 Refreshments and networking
09:15–11:05 Evolving Technologies 2 (Chair: Michael Quail)
09.15–09.40 Germline whole-genome sequencing with high accuracy and improved coverage using the Ultima Genomics UG200 sequencing platform and Solaris 2.0 Chemistry — Sarah Pollock, Ultima
09.40–10.05 Sequencing by Expansion (SBX) — an ulta-fast, scalable, high-throughput single-molecule sequencing technology — Bernd Timmerman, Roche
10.05–10.30 Oxford Nanopore: Unlocking New Dimensions in Biology — Lakmal Jayasinghe, ONT
10.30–10.50 Development of a fully integrated benchtop NGS-based platform, LiDia-SEQ™, for use at the point-of-need — Raquel Fraccari, DNAe
10.50–11.00 Title to follow — Emma Sharkey
11:05–11:30 Coffee break
11:30–12:30 Keynotes (Chair: Nick Loman)
11.30–12.00 Oxford Nanopore Long Read Sequenced Genomes of UK Biobank participants — Bjarni Halldorsson, deCODE
12.00–12.30 Population genetics and genomics of ME/CFS, a neglected disease — Chris Ponting, University of Edinburgh
12:45 Lunch & end