Marie Agnes Petit- Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment- Paris
Arvind Varsani- Arizona State University, USA
Denise Kühnert- Robert Koch Institute
Ludwign- Wildau
Richard Neher- University of Basel,Switzerland
Maria Joao Amorim- Biomedical Research Centre (CBR) - Lisbon, Portugal
Pieter Libin- Artificial Intelligence Lab - Brussels, Belgium
Program Schedule
Monday Evening May 12. 2025
| 19:00 | Welcome Reception & Networking Event Venue to be announced |
Tuesday – May 13. 2025
| 09:00–09:30 | Registration |
| 09:30–10:00 | Welcome and Opening Remarks |
| 10:00–10:30 | Keynote Talk: Making Sense of Lipidomic and Metabolomic Reprogramming in Influenza A Infected Host Cells Maria João Amorim, Medical School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal |
| 10:30–11:00 | Coffee Break |
| Session 1: Ancient Viruses | |
| 11:00–11:20 | An Orbi-Like Virus in Diverse Parasitic Nematodes with Circulating and Ancient Endogenous Forms Katy Brown, University of Cambridge, UK |
| 11:20–11:40 | Decoding the Paleovirology of Retroviruses: Exploring Proviral Evolution and Invasion Patterns Across Mammalian Genomes Emma Harding, University of Oxford, UK |
| 11:40–12:00 | Accurate Reconstruction of Persistent Human Viral Sequences Maria J. P. Sousa, University of Aveiro, Portugal |
| 12:00–13:30 | Lunch Break |
| 13:30–14:00 | Poster Pitches A |
| 14:00–15:30 | Poster Session A |
| 15:30–16:00 | Coffee Break |
| Session 2: Viral Adaptation | |
| 16:00–16:30 | Keynote Talk: Recombination Reassortment and Accessories the Dynamic Lifestyle of Small DNA Viruses Arvind Varsani, Arizona State University, USA |
| 16:30–16:50 | Granger-Causality Analysis Reveals Antiviral Potential of Defective Viral Genomes from Time Series Data Mia Le, University of Hamburg, Germany |
Wednesday – May 14. 2025
| 09:15–09:45 | Announcements and Group Photo |
| Session 3: Surveillance | |
| 09:45–10:15 | Keynote Talk: Optimising Epidemic Mitigation Policies with Reinforcement Learning Pieter Libin, VUB Artificial Intelligence Lab, Belgium |
| 10:15–10:35 | ISG Profiler: A High-Throughput Quantification Tool for Interferon-Stimulated Genes to Enhance Viral Surveillance Luca Nishimura, University of Tokyo, Japan |
| 10:35–10:55 | VIRUS-MVP: A Framework for Comprehensive Surveillance of Viral Mutations and Their Functional Impacts Zohaib Anwar, Simon Fraser University, Canada |
| 10:55–11:30 | Coffee Break |
| Session 4: Virus Detection and Classification | |
| 11:30–11:50 | INSaFLU-TELEVIR+: An Open Web-Based Bioinformatics Platform for Metagenomic Pathogen Detection Joao Santos, INSA, Lisbon, Portugal |
| 11:50–12:10 | Virus Genome Reconstruction for the Integrated Genomic Surveillance in Germany Using Nextflow Thomas Krannich, Robert Koch Institute, Berlin, Germany |
| 12:10–12:30 | vcat: A Computational Approach to Comparative Genomics-Based Virus Classification Yasas Wijesekara, University Medicine Greifswald, Germany |
| 12:30–14:00 | Lunch Break |
| 14:00–14:30 | Poster Pitch B |
| 14:30–16:00 | Poster Session B |
| 16:00–16:30 | Coffee Break |
| Session 5: Evolution of Viruses | |
| 16:30–16:50 | The Evolution of Giant RNA Genomes in Nidoviruses Chris Lauber, TWINCORE, Hannover, Germany |
| 16:50–17:10 | What’s More? Transcriptome Mining Reveals Diversity and Evolution of Iflaviruses in Lepidoptera Anne Kupczok, Wageningen University, Netherlands |
| 17:10–17:30 | Keynote Talk: Unraveling the Evolution and Transmission of Infectious Pathogens Through Integrating Phylogenomics and Machine Learning Denise Kühnert, Robert Koch Institute, Germany |
| 20:00 | Conference Dinner at Restaurante Doca de Santo |
Thursday – May 15. 2025
| 09:15–09:30 | Announcements |
| Session 6: Phages | |
| 09:30–10:00 | Keynote Talk: What Can We Say Reliably About Intestinal Viromes Marie-Agnès Petit, INRAE, France |
| 10:00–10:20 | Evolutionary Building Blocks of Phage Proteome Shed Light on Phage Protein Recombination and Adaptation Emerging at Subdomain Level Bogna Smug, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland |
| 10:20–10:40 | Insights and Caution from a CRISPR Spacer Analysis on a Global Scale Uri Neri, Joint Genome Institute, Berkeley, United States |
| 10:40–11:15 | Coffee Break |
| Session 7: Viral Proteins in Interaction | |
| 11:15–11:35 | Capsid Renovations in Harsh Environments: Evolving a Stable Home for Your Genome Varada Khot, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany |
| 11:35–11:55 | Subgenomic Flaviviral RNAs and Human Proteins: In Silico Exploration of Anti-Host Defense Mechanisms Riccardo Delli Ponti, Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, Italy |
| 11:55–12:15 | A Protein Language Model for Predicting Viral Antigenic Maps and Exploring Their Evolution Shusuke Kawakubo, The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan |
| 12:15–13:45 | Lunch Break |
| 13:45–14:30 | EVBC Meeting |
| Session 9: SARS-CoV-2 | |
| 14:30–14:50 | SARS-CoV-2 Evolution on a Dynamic Immune Landscape Sofia Paraskevopoulou, Robert Koch Institute, Berlin, Germany |
| 14:50–15:10 | CoVFit: A Protein Language Model for Exploring the SARS-CoV-2 Fitness Landscape Jumpei Ito, University of Tokyo, Japan |
| 15:10–15:15 | Final Voting Break |
| 15:15–15:45 | Keynote Talk: Mutation Purifying Selection and Adaptive Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 Richard Neher, University of Basel, Switzerland |
| 15:45–16:15 | Closing Ceremony & Prize Giving |