December 2025: Koret-UC Berkeley-TAU Initiative (KBT) hosts dedicated session at ISCB‑Asia 2025

The University of Hong Kong and the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) hosted the International Conference on Genome Informatics (GIW XXXIV ISCB‑Asia 2025), held on December 10–13, 2025, in Hong Kong. GIW ISCB‑Asia provides an international platform for presenting advances in computational biology, health informatics, and biomedical data science.

As part of the conference, Prof. Noam Shomron (TAU) and Prof. Steven Brenner (UC Berkeley) organized a dedicated KBT Initiative session on December 11, 2025. The program opened with an introductory talk titled “Genomics over Lifespan”, delivered jointly by Profs. Shomron and Brenner. In his remarks, Prof. Shomron also introduced the KBT Initiative and its mission to foster scientific collaboration in computational biology and bioinformatics between the two universities.

The opening was followed by five invited presentations from UC Berkeley and TAU researchers.

Prof. Noam Shomron (TAU) delivered a keynote lecture titled “Genomics throughout Life and Death.”
Prof. Rani Elkon (TAU) presented “GWAS Discoveries in the Genetics of Complex Diseases: The Clinical Utility.”
Prof. Joe Lewnard (UC Berkeley) spoke on “Extensive Cryptic Circulation of Mpox Virus: Inference from Clinical and Genomic Surveillance.”
Prof. Asaf Madi (TAU) presented “Advancing Single‑Cell Analysis with scNET: A GNN Framework for Gene Expression and PPI Network Integration – Pushing for Increasing Life Expectancy.”
The session concluded with a presentation by Prof. Steven Brenner, titled "TBD”.

Some 70 participants attended the session, including international PIs as well as local researchers in computer science and bioinformatics from the University of Hong Kong.

This event was supported by KBT Initiative exchange travel awards.