Speakers

Prof. Alejandro Sifrim has a background in biochemistry, statistical genomics and bioinformatics. He obtained his PhD at KUL ESAT under Prof. Yves Moreau. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (Cambridge, UK) under Matthew Hurles, he was part of the analysis team of the Deciphering Developmental Disorders study, the largest study to date on undiagnosed developmental disorders, where he helped develop computational methodologies for genomic variant detection and interpretation.

As a senior postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Thierry Voet, he focused on the analysis of multi-modal single-cell technologies. Recently, he has started the Laboratory of Multi-omic Integrative Bioinformatics at the KU Leuven Department of Human Genetics, focusing on the development of computational techniques for the analysis spatial multi-omics data in the context of normal human development and disease. His scientific contributions include: genomic variant prioritization and interpretation (AnnotateIt, eXtasy) and genomic variant detection (MrMosaic).

He also contributed to the understanding of the genetic architecture of congenital heart disease, mammary gland development, tumour epithelial-mesenchymal transitioning, stem cell dynamics in normal and artificial skin expansion and is part of the Human Cell Atlas initiative contributing to the Gut Cell Atlas project.