6th Translational Genomics & Epigenomics Symposium
September 24 & 25, 2026
2026 Keynote Speakers
Our group was among the first to develop methods for comprehensively mapping mobile DNA insertion sites in the human genome, which underscored that these are a significant source of structural variation (Cell, 2010). We have since studied the functional effects of inherited mobile element insertions using a combination of genetic approaches and molecular biology (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017) and are exploring their contributions to somatic mosaicism across human tissues. Our group has also shown that the expression of long interspersed element-1 (LINE-1, L1) ORF1p is a hallmark of human cancers (American Journal of Pathology, 2014), and that somatically-acquired L1 insertions occur during cancer evolution (Nature Medicine, 2015). Our lab is currently studying consequences of this activity for DNA repair and chromosomal instability in cancer cells (Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, 2020, bioRxiv) and seeking to translate our understanding of this basic biology to improve our approaches to cancer diagnostics and therapeutics.
Siyuan (Steven) Wang, Ph. D., is an Associate Professor of Genetics and Cell Biology at Yale School of Medicine. Research in his lab focuses on the development and application of state-of-the-art image-based omics approaches to understand the spatial organization of mammalian genome and transcriptome, and how they impact cellular states. Originally from China, Dr. Wang received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Peking University in 2007. He then moved to the US and received a Ph. D. in Molecular Biology from Princeton in 2011 and later his postdoctoral training at Harvard. In 2017 he was appointed Assistant Professor by Yale University, and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 2023. Dr. Wang developed/co-developed multiple influential technologies in the spatial omics field including the first-in-kind image-based 3D genomics method termed “chromatin tracing” (Science 2016) to trace the spatial folding of genome, “MERFISH” for spatial transcriptome profiling (Science 2015, Nature Methods Method of the Year 2020), and “MINA” for integrative 3D genome, spatial transcriptome and protein imaging in the same, single cells in mammalian tissue. His lab recently generated the first single-cell 3D genome atlases in cancer (Nature Genetics 2025), developed a new high-content screening technology termed “Perturb-tracing” for building the 3D genomic “regulatome” (Nature Methods 2025), and invented a new spatial transcriptomics technology termed “RAEFISH” for sequencing-free whole-genome spatial transcriptomic mapping with single-molecule resolution (Cell 2025). He received the 2011 American Physical Society Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Biological Physics, the 2012 Jane Coffin Childs Fellowship, the 2016 International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Young Scientist Prize in Biological Physics, the 2018 35 Innovators Under 35 of China by MIT Technology Review, the 2019 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the 2022 Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research, the 2023 Biophysical Society Early Career Award in Physical Cell Biology, the 2023 Hevolution/AFAR New Investigator Awards in Aging Biology and Geroscience Research, and the 2024 American Society for Cell Biology Innovation in Research Award.
Dr. Volker Hovestadt is a computational biologist and principal investigator in the Department of Pediatric Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. He also is an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Dr. Hovestadt and his colleagues have made significant contributions to the field of childhood brain tumor research, particularly in the analysis of cancer epigenomes. He is a key inventor of the Heidelberg brain tumor classifier, a machine learning-based tool that generates accurate patient diagnoses from genome-wide DNA methylation profiles. This tool is now widely employed in hospitals globally. Dr. Hovestadt has also studied the cellular heterogeneity of childhood brain tumors and leukemia using novel computational and experimental single-cell techniques. His research has been published in over 100 research articles in the field of childhood cancer research.
Dr. Hovestadt earned his MSc from ETH Zürich in 2010 and his PhD from the German Cancer Research Center and Heidelberg University in 2014 under the guidance of Dr. Peter Lichter. Subsequently, he relocated to the United States to work with Dr. Bradley Bernstein at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute. In 2020, he established his own laboratory at Dana-Farber. In recognition of his work, Dr. Hovestadt has received several awards and fellowships, including the Helmholtz Doctoral Prize, an EMBO and HFSP postdoctoral fellowship, the Innovation Award of the German University Medicine Society, the Child Health Research Award by the Charles H. Hood Foundation, the Emerging Scientist Award by the Children’s Cancer Research Fund, and the Pediatric V Scholar Award by the V Foundation.