09:30    Panel talk : tbc

11:00    Registration & welcome get together

12:00    Welcome & introduction

Keynote lecture I

12:15    Marianne Bronner (California Institute of Technology)
    Gene regulatory subcircuits controlling neural crest stem cell fate along the body axis

13:15    lunch break

    SESSION 1: Developmental plasticity

14:15    Stefanie Grosswendt (Berlin Institute of Health & Max Delbrück Center)
    Cell communication uncovered in single-cell resolved neighborhoods

14:45    Chloe Roffay (IMP - Research Institute of Molecular Pathology)
    Uncovering the forces driving specification and morphogenesis of extraembryonic amnion during human gastrulation 

15:00    Irene Zorzan (Babraham Institute)
    New approaches to study the regulators of human trophoblast development

15:30    break

16:00    Undine-Sophie Deumer (University of Cambridge)
    Ability of committed progenitor cells to rewire their fate under homeostatic conditions

16:15    Mekayla Storer (Cambridge Stem Cell Institute)
    At the tip of Regeneration – Insights from tissue mechanics and the extracellular matrix

16:45     Luis Miguel Cerron Alvan (Max Perutz Labs)
    Wt1 acts as a rheostat switch to guide early post-implantation fate and has isoform specific lineage-inductive potential

17:00    break

17:30    Noelia Anton-Bolaños (University Medical Center Utrecht)
    Mirroring Human Brain Development and Disease Using Brain Organoids as Avatars

18:00    Giulio Di Minin (CRO National Cancer Institute)
    Be Happy (and Haploid): The Role of Cell Size and Metabolic Constraints in Haploid Stem Cell Stability 

18:15    POSTER SESSION I

20:00    Symposium Dinner [on site, open to everyone]

    SESSION 2: Signaling and Patterning

09:00    Lucie Zilova (Centre for Organismal Studies)
    Development Without Constraints: Organoids as Testbeds for Alternative Developmental Pathways

09:30    Amy Wilkinson (Babraham Institute)
    Investigating the role of transcription factors in anteroposterior patterning of human post-implantation epiblast 

09:45    Tiago Rito (University of Hong Kong)
    In vitro embryology and tissue design: tuning axial progenitors to make the human backbone.

10:15    break

10:45    Anastasios Balaskas (Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics)
    An advanced head-to-tail mouse gastrulation model with hypoxia-mediated neural patterning 

11:00    Gavin Schlissel (Stanford University)
    Extracellular Hedgehog diffusion, and evolution of novel morphogen gradients

11:30    break

12:00    Vikas Trivedi (EMBL-Barcelona)
    tbc

12:30        Irene Amblard (Imperial College London)
    CDX factors instruct neural crest regionalisation programmes

12:45    lunch & group picture

   SESSION 3: Neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration

14:00    Evgenia Salta (Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience)
    Single-cell molecular mapping of human adult hippocampal neurogenesis in Alzheimer’s disease

14:30    Elisa Gabassi (University of Innsbruck)
    Aged human brain organoids capture hallmarks of neural ageing and reveal PHF2 and ZNF93 as regulators of LINE-1 repression

14:45    break

15:15    Eduardo Leyva Díaz (Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante)
    Dissecting neuronal identity: from worms to vertebrates

15:45    Irene Varela (Institute of Science and Technology Austria)
    Beyond inside-out: Tracing the Origins of Projection Neuron Fate and Diversity in the Mouse Neocortex

16:00    POSTER SESSION II

18:00    end of session - free evening for attendees

19:00    Speaker dinner [only by invitation]

    SESSION 4: Automation

09:00    Wali Malik (AITHYRA)
    tbc

09:30    Athina Patra (Leiden University Medical Center)
    OtoNeurons in a Dish: Generating Spiral Ganglion Neurons from Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

09:45    Daniel Paull (The Jackson Laboratory / The New York Stem Cell Foundation)
    Scaling biology at the intersection of automation, stem cells, and AI

10:15    break

    SESSION 5: Stem cell models for human health

10:45     Eleonora Conti (Human Technopole)
    Human trigeminal ganglion organoids enable modelling of host-virus interactions of herpesviruses

11:00   Margherita Turco (Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research)
    Organoid Systems as a Window into Women’s Reproductive Health

11:30    break

12:00    Nicole Amberg (Medical University of Vienna)
    Regional dynamics of tumor initiation in neural stem cells upon oncogenic germline mutations/tumor predisposition syndromes 

12:15    Johannes Bargehr (Cambridge Stem Cell Institute)
    Immune niche conditioning in cardiac repair 

12:45    lunch

13:45    Elisa Laurenti (Cambridge Stem Cell Institute)
    Why do human haematopoietic stem cells lose function ex vivo?

 14:15    Francesco Boccellato (University of Oxford)
    A YAP1–DKK1–Wnt mechanochemical circuit defines the human gastric regenerative niche

14:30    break

Keynote lecture II

15:00    Lorenz Studer (Sloan Kettering Institute)
    tbc

16:00    Closing remarks