Please download the abstract book here.
Please find the poster session overview below the programme schedule.
All times in Eastern European Time Zone (EET).
Unless otherwise noted, ViBioM will take place at Vilnius University, Universiteto g. 3, Vilnius:
Sessions and Poster pitches – Theatre Hall
Poster sessions – Aula Parva
Coffee breaks – Morgue
Sunday, 17 May 2026
| 09:00 – 18:00 | Virus Bioinformatics + nf-core Hybrid Collaborative Hackathon Vilnius University, Seminar Room 239, Universiteto g. 3, Vilnius AND online |
| 19:00 | Welcome Get Together Pub “Etmonų Špunka”, Etmonų g. 3, Vilnius |
Monday, 18 May 2026
| 08:30 | Registration Desk Opens |
| 09:00 – 09:30 | Welcome and Opening Remarks Theatre Hall Manja Marz (EVBC Director) Gytis Dudas, Ingrida Olendraitė (Local Organizers) |
| Session 1 | Machine Learning Methods – Chair: Anne Kupczok |
| 09:30 – 09:50 | T01 – VTT-Net: Learning Viral Tissue Tropism Using Graph Neural Networks Haley Stone | University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom |
| 09:50 – 10:10 | T02 – Phylogenetically structured machine learning allows for interpretable predictions of paramyxovirus hosts James Herzig | University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom |
| 10:10 – 10:30 | T03 – Family-level classification of viral contigs using deep learning Emma Soufir | Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | COFFEE BREAK |
| Session 2 | Metagenomics – Chair: Dominika Kadlečková |
| 11:00 – 11:30 | Keynote Talk T04 – Logan: Planetary-scale assembly of DNA/RNA sequencing data and its applications in virology Rayan Chikhi | Institut Pasteur, Paris, France |
| 11:30 – 12:00 | Keynote Talk T05 – Illuminating Viral Dark Matter Ingrida Olendraitė | EVBC, RdRp Summit |
| 12:00 – 13:30 | LUNCH BREAK |
| 13:30 – 14:00 | Poster Pitches/Snapshots A Theatre Hall – Chair: Fabiana Neves |
| 14:00 – 15:30 | Poster Session A Aula Parva |
| 15:30 – 16:00 | COFFEE BREAK |
| Session 3 | Mutational Effects – Chair: Maximilian Nocke |
| 16:00 – 16:20 | T06 – Using in-silico DMS to identify conservation and change in viral proteins Robert Strange | University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom |
| 16:20 – 16:50 | T07 – V-gTK and V-gDB: A Modular Framework for Interpreting Mutation in Viral Genome Joseph Hughes | University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom |
Tuesday, 19 May 2026
| 08:30 – 09:00 | Announcements & Group Photo Theatre Hall |
| Session 4 | Virus Proteomics – Chair: Alexander Gorbalenya |
| 09:00 – 09:30 | Keynote Talk T08 – Comparative Proteomic and Structural Analysis of Newly Discovered (Pro)phages within the Phylum Cyanobacteriota Darius Kazlauskas | Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania |
| 09:30 – 09:50 | T09 – Application of AlphaFold in virology: from predicting protein structures to modelling protein-protein interactions Ulad Litvin | University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom |
| 09:50 – 10:10 | T10 – Variable evolutionary routes for the gain and loss of the upstream open reading frame in enteroviruses Katy Brown | University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom |
| 10:10 – 10:30 | T11 – Benchmarking sequence, embedding and structure-based methods for eukaryotic virus protein annotation Lander De Coninck | KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | COFFEE BREAK |
| Session 5 | Ancient Virus Research – Chair: Joana Abrantes |
| 11:00 – 11:20 | T12 – Exploring historical retroviral transmission patterns in vertebrates using endogenous retroviruses Emma Harding | University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom |
| 11:20 – 11:40 | T13 – A network-based approach to characterizing Endogenous Viral Elements in vertebrate genomes Laura Munoz-Baena | University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom |
| 11:40 – 12:00 | Virus Bioinformatics + nf-core Hybrid Collaborative Hackathon: Outcomes Shahram Saghaei | Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany |
| 12:00 – 13:30 | LUNCH BREAK |
| 13:30 – 13:45 | Poster Pitches/Snapshots B Theatre Hall – Chair: Joseph Hughes |
| 13:45 – 15:30 | Poster Session B Aula Parva |
| 15:30 – 16:00 | COFFEE BREAK |
| 16:00–16:45 |
Keynote Talk – Chair: N.N. T14 – VirusREvolution: Decoding tools for virus research Manja Marz | Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany |
| 19:00 | Conference Dinner Restaurant/Pub “Artistai”, Šv. Kazimiero g. 3, Vilnius |
Wednesday, 20 May 2026
| 09:15 – 09:30 | Announcements Theatre Hall |
| Session 6 | Phylogenomics – Chair: David Robertson |
| 09:30 – 10:00 | Keynote Talk T15 – Thought over throughput: a public data-fueled deep dive into orthomyxovirus biology Gytis Dudas | Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania |
| 10:00 – 10:20 | T16 – Using phylogenetic and phylogeographic approaches to explore the role of reassortment in the diversification of host specificity and associated spread of panzootic HSNl influenza Will Harvey | Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, United Kingdom |
| 10:20 – 10:50 | COFFEE BREAK |
| Session 7 | RNA Biology – Chair: Shoichi Sakaguchi |
| 10:50 – 11:20 | Keynote Talk T17 – An RNA-centric perspective on human pathogenic RNA viruses Mathias Munschauer | Medical Faculty Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany |
| 11:20 – 11:40 | T18 – Integrating RNA structure and protein interactions to uncover the mechanisms of viral and cellular ires function Riccardo Delli Ponti | Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, Italy |
| 11:40 – 12:00 | T19 – RdRpCATCH: A unified resource for RNA virus discovery using viral RNAdependent RNA polymerase profile Hidden Markov models Dimitris Karapliafis | Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands |
| 12:00 – 13:30 | LUNCH BREAK |
| 13:30 – 14:30 | Annual Meeting of the EVBC Theatre Hall (open to all interested ViBioM participants) |
| 14:30 – 15:00 | Closing Ceremony / Awards (“Best ECR Talk” and “Best Scientific Poster”) |
Poster Sessions
Highlighted posters will be pitched in a snapshot presentation immediately before the poster session:
Poster Snapshots A on Monday at 13:30 – 14:00 | Poster Snapshots B on Tuesday at 13:30 – 13:45.
| Poster Session A | Monday 18 May, 14:00 – 15:30 | |
| A01 | Fishing metagenomic dark matter to recover missing viral segment, case study with quaranjaviruses Emre Mert Asar | Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania |
| A02 | Predicting bat-borne virus spillover in livestock from their genome sequences Bailey Atkinson | University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom |
| A03 | Virus identification using HTS in pea and sugar beet: A basis for future resistance breeding studies Karima Ben Mansour | Swedish University of Life Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden |
| A04 | First detection of fig cryptic virus in Croatia revealed by nanopore sequencing of Ficus carica Nina Buljević | University of Zagreb Faculty of Agriculture, Zagreb, Croatia |
| A05 | Early Intra-Host Evolution of Hepatitis E Virus in Asymptomatic Blood Donors: Foundations for a Clinical Course Prediction Tool Nadi Dixit | Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany |
| A06 | Bridging the Diagnostic Gap: Implementing Metagenomic Virus Discovery for Undifferentiated Febrile Illness in Mozambique Stela Feliciano | Instituto Superior de Ciências e Tecnologia de Moçambique, Maputo, Mozambique |
| A07 | Pregnancy and Early-Life Gut Virome in the Lifelines NEXT cohort: Origin, Persistence, Influencing Factors and Health Implications Asier Fernández Pato | University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands |
| A08 | FluMut: open-source tool for mutation surveillance in Avian Influenza Viruses Edoardo Giussani | Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie, Legnaro, Italy |
| A09 | A Machine Learning approach for Alphainfluenzavirus influenzae (H3N2) host prediction based on virus-host genetic features João Pedro Guimarães | University of Campinas – UNICAMP, Campinas, SP, Brazil |
| A10 | Protocol Bias Shapes Viral Detection and Assembly in Public Bat Viromes Dominika Kadlečková | Charles University, Prague, Czechia |
| A11 | Context-Dependent Mutation Rates and Fitness Landscapes in RNA Viruses Alexander Kuznetsov | University of Basel, Biozentrum, Basel, Switzerland |
| A12 | Metagenomic De Novo Assembly of Viral Nanopore Field Samples Mia Le | Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany |
| A13 | ViMOP: A field-ready pipeline for viral metagenomic nanopore sequencing Mia Le | Outbreak Preparedness and Response, Bernhard-Nocht-Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany |
| A14 | Current and Future AI-based Resources Provided by the BV-BRC and ICTV Elliot Lefkowitz | University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, United States |
| A15 | Analyzing feature importance in machine learning models uncovers genotype discriminators for hepatitis E virus Maximilian Nocke | Department of Translational and Computational Infection Research, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany |
| A16 | Exploring the whitefly microbiome: insights into the composition of a complex ecological community Laura Patiño Medina | Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands |
| A17 | Spider webs as natural samplers for metagenomic surveillance of viral diversity Anja Pecman | National Institute of Biology, Ljubljana, Slovenia |
| A18 | Systematic characterization of major and minor variants in Enterovirus D68 reveals extensive low-frequency diversity in respiratory samples (2023–2025) Greta Romano | Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, Pavia, Italy |
| A19 | Genin2: an open-source ML-based A(H5) influenza genotyping tool Alessandro Sartori | Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie, Legnaro (PD), Italy |
| A20 | Genomic characterization of a genetically engineered HCMV strain for vaccine production Hanno Schmidt | University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany |
| A21 | Design and Assessment of PANDEVIR capture panel for viral characterization in environmental samples Maria Tarradas-Alemany | Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain |
| A22 | Inferring antigenic escape mutations in GII.4 noroviruses A S M Rubayet Ul Alam | MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR), Glasgow, United Kingdom |
| A23 | Genomic Mutations and DNA Methylation Define Divergent Phage Resistance Strategies in P. aeruginosa Laurynas Vaitkus | Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania |
| A24 | Mining public metagenomic databases for the presence of AAV2 Lukas Visockas | University of West London, London, United Kingdom |
| Poster Session B | Tuesday 19 May, 13:45 – 15:30 | |
| B01 | Sub-Consensus Variation in Influenza A across UK Charadriiformes (2023–2026) Ben Clifton | Animal Plant and Health Agency, Woking, United Kingdom |
| B02 | suvtk: making viral genome submission FAIRly easy Lander De Coninck | KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium |
| B03 | New thermophilic bacteriophages and their proteins Monika Dębińska | University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland |
| B04 | Back to the past: Evolutionary insights into historical human astrovirus Génesis Dela | National Laboratory of Virology, Szentagothai Research Centre, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary |
| B05 | A Single-Cell Transcriptomics Approach to Compare Coronavirus Infection in Human and Camelid Primary Airway Epithelial Cells Vera Flück | University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland |
| B06 | Parallel evolution of comparable large complexity in two sister RNA virus orders Alexander Gorbalenya | Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands |
| B07 | Structural analysis of host insertions in the polyproline region of the hepatitis E virus pORF1 polyprotein Nicolas Jeanne | CHU Purpan Virology Laboratory, Toulouse, France |
| B08 | Multi-omics analysis of long-term coevolution of Streptococcus thermophilus and its lytic phage Yana Karnitskaya | Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania |
| B09 | Finetuning protein language models with viral proteins Kieran Lamb | MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, Glasgow, United Kingdom |
| B10 | ViralZone: Linking genomes, enzymes, structure and function Philippe Le Mercier | Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB), Geneva, Switzerland |
| B11 | First Report of Parahenipavirus in UK Shrews (Sorex araneus) Highlights Accessory X Locus Plasticity Dan Maskell | Animal and Plant Health Agency (UK), Addlestone, United Kingdom |
| B12 | Whole genome phylogenetics reveals dominance of Eurasian Avian-like and reassortment with pandemic H1N1 in Swiss Pig herds Mike Mwanga | Universtity of Bern, Bern, Switzerland |
| B13 | Pathoplexus: Building an equitable pathogen database Anna Parker | Swiss TPH; SIB; Pathoplexus; Basel, Switzerland |
| B14 | Poxvirus Gene Repertoire Evolution Driven by de novo Gene Birth, Gene Duplication, and Horizontal Gene Transfer Arnon Plianchaisuk | The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan |
| B15 | A NeoRdRp-based Three-Step Pipeline for High-Precision RdRp Detection Shoichi Sakaguchi | Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Takatsuki, Japan |
| B16 | Which viruses betray mosquito movements? Martynas Smicius | Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania |
| B17 | Production of Nanobody to Canine Parvovirus VP2 Protein Hasan Emre Tali | Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa, Istanbul, Turkey |
| B18 | Preliminary Studies on the Detection and Molecular Characterisation of Parainfluenza Virus-5 in Dogs in Istanbul Hasan Emre Tali | Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa, Istanbul, Turkey |
| B19 | What is facilitating a global virus pandemic in mosquitoes? Aistė Židonytė | Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania |
| B20 | The consequences of extinct viruses returning to human populations Andrius Zimnickas | Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania |
| B21 | Resolving prophage diversity and functional cargo in plant-associated Erwinia billingiae using long-read sequencing Nikita Zrelovs | Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Centre, Riga, Latvia |
| B22 | Evolution and Diversity in Papillomaviruses Found in Wild Felids Ayla Zustra | Arizona State University, Tempe, United States |
| B23 | Vertebrate infecting viruses found in deceased bobcat (Lynx rufus) Ayla Zustra | Arizona State University, Tempe, United States |
| B24 | Exploring the evolution of Influenza-like viruses: Sequence and structure-based analysis of PB1 and glycoproteins Ausrine Zvirblyte | Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania |
| B25 | SpaXSeq & TIGO: GUI Tools for Viral Spatial Transcriptomics and scRNA-Seq Trajectory Inference Quan Gu | MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, Glasgow, United Kingdom |