2026 PQG Conference Agenda

Thursday, October 29, 2026

8:30-9:00 am Registration & Breakfast | Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, 3rd Floor Rotunda

9:00-9:05 Opening Remarks

SESSION 1:  Multi-modal Genomics Data
Moderators: Kyle Vogan, Nature Genetics & Kushal Kumar Dey, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

* last 5 minutes of all session talks reserved for questions and discussion

9:05-9:55
Eric Xing | KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI and CMU School of Computer Science
A World Model of the Virtual Cell

9:55-10:25
Katalin Susztak | University of Pennsylvania
From Kidney Maps to Kidney Models: Genomics, Single-Cell Atlases, and Foundation Models for Precision Nephrology

10:25-10:40
Aarthi Venkat | Abstract Winner Platform Talk
Geometric machine learning enables multiscale perturbational reasoning

10:40-11:00  BREAK

11:00-11:30
Neville Sanjana | New York Genome Center
Massively-parallel approaches to understand the human noncoding genome and transcriptome

11:30-12:00
Sohrab Shah | Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Population scale multimodal integration of digital pathology and clinical genomics in oncology

12:00-1:15  LUNCH

SESSION 2: Multi-modal Health Data
Moderator: Kun-Hsing Yu, Harvard Medical School

1:15-2:05
Sylvia K. Plevritis | KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Stanford University
Multiscale Modeling of Lung Cancer: Toward Connecting Population Science and Tumor Biology through Multimodal AI

2:05-2:35
Ben Glass | Roche
Computational Pathology at Scale: From Discovery to Drug Development to Global Diagnostics

2:35-3:05
Saeed Hassanpour | Dartmouth University
Multimodal AI in Cancer: Measuring What Each Modality Adds

3:05-3:30 BREAK

3:30-3:45
Yon Ho Jee | Abstract Winner Platform Talk II
Proteomic Signatures Capture Environmental Exposures Across Diverse Populations

3:45-4:15
Panos Roussos | Icahn School of Medicine, Mt Sinai
Decoding Brain Disease Heterogeneity through Population-Scale Multimodal Genomics

4:15-6:00  Poster Session and Reception | 2nd floor lounge

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Friday, October 30, 2026

8:30-9:00 am  Breakfast | Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, 3rd Floor Rotunda

SESSION 3: Multimodal AI Systems: Scalable and Trustworthy Integration
Moderator: Tianxi Cai, Harvard Medical School, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

9:00-9:50
Marinka Zitnik | KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Harvard Medical School
Foundation Models and AI Agents for Biomedical Discovery

9:50-10:20
Hongtu Zhu | UNC Gillings School of Public Health
Multimodal disease routes link risk to biology across the human phenome

10:20-10:40  BREAK

10:40-10:55
Gege Qian | Abstract Winner Platform Talk III
Remodeling of Cancer Cell Architecture by Chemotherapy

10:55-11:25
Cory McLean | Google Research
Multimodal LLMs and beyond: optimizing prediction models with controlled agent swarms

11:25-11:55
Yushun Dong | Florida State University
From Multimodal Reasoning to Trustworthy AI Agents for Genomics and Health

11:55-12:00 Closing Remarks
Xihong Lin, Conference Chair