Akademiets årsmøte finner sted mandag 5. mai

PROGRAM

• Forskningspolitisk innledning ved preses, Annelin Eriksen
• Overrekkelse av diplomer til Akademiets nye medlemmer ved preses, Annelin Eriksen og 
  generalsekretær, Marit Westergaard.
• Fridtjof Nansens belønning for fremragende forskning.
• Fridtjof Nansens belønning for yngre forskere.
• Det Norske Videnskaps-Akaddemis lærerpris.
• Musikalsk innslag.
• Foredrag.
  
  Festmiddag i Speilsalen

Foredrag ved professor Ewan Birney, CBE FRS FMedSci. Han er Deputy Director General, EMBL & Director, EMBL-EBI European Bioinformatics Institute, EMBL, Cambridge, UK. Han skal snakke om:

"The new science of AI and its application to biology: The opportunities for Europe"

Sammendrag
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is Europe’s only intergovernmental research-performing organization dedicated to advancing molecular life sciences. Established in 1974 by ten founding countries, EMBL has since grown to encompass 30 member states - including Norway - operating across six sites. For over half a century, the long-term commitment of its member states has enabled EMBL to fulfill its five core missions: conducting cutting-edge research, providing high-quality scientific services, training future generations of scientists, fostering technology transfer, and integrating life sciences across Europe and beyond. EMBL’s current scientific programme, 'Molecules to Ecosystems' extends its molecular biology expertise to address pressing societal challenges, including biodiversity loss, antimicrobial resistance, pollution, climate change, food security, and emerging pathogens. Central to this effort is the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in life sciences research. EMBL is spearheading the adoption of AI to enhance biological modeling, optimize lab workflows, and refine data infrastructure, ensuring seamless interaction between AI-driven insights and experimental research. By embedding AI deeply into its scientific and operational framework, EMBL solidifies its leadership in AI-powered innovation, reinforcing Europe’s influence in this transformative field. EMBL’s existing data and experimental infrastructures have a history of enabling science across Europe - from fundamental discoveries based on the human genome to the rapid scientific responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 Data Portal, for example, allowed for real-time data sharing across Europe, accelerating research on the virus and its variants. Making scientific data openly accessible is a fundamental part of EMBL’s service mission, and through data curation and digital infrastructure EMBL has been providing essential resources to the wider scientific community. A key example is the collaboration with Google DeepMind, in which EMBL-EBI delivered the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database, making AlphaFold 2 protein predictions freely available. This resource has fueled discoveries across life sciences and was highlighted in presentations for the Nobel Prize 2024 in Chemistry for AlphaFold. Another factor central to EMBL’s success is its attraction of global scientific talent. Through its scientific excellence and its unique nine-year turnover system, EMBL regularly recruits young, independent group leaders, ensuring continuous innovation and scientific renewal. This approach has positioned EMBL as a leading hub for training the next generation of researchers, and inspired its member states to adopt similar organisational models on the national level in the form of Partnerships. One accomplished example is the Nordic EMBL Partnership, with four node institutes across Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway - namely the Norwegian Centre for Molecular Medicine and Bioscience (NCMBM) in Oslo. This inter-institutional research initiative of the Nordic Partnership resulted in deep research links between the four Nordic nodes and EMBL, including Postdoctoral programs and joint research projects.

As a driving force in European and global research, EMBL coordinates not only scientific but also policy outputs with other (intergovernmental) research organisations and the European Commission. By fostering global interdisciplinary cooperation, EMBL continues to push scientific boundaries and address major planetary and human health challenges, exemplifying how collaborative science can generate solutions for a rapidly evolving world.

Bilde

Presentasjon av foredragsholder
Ewan Birney is Deputy Director General of EMBL. He is also Director of EMBL-EBI,and runs a small research group. Ewan completed his PhD at the Wellcome Sanger Institute with Richard Durbin. In 2000, he became Head of Nucleotide data at EMBL-EBI and in 2012 he took on the role of Associate Director at the institute. He became Director of EMBL-EBI in 2015. In 2020, Ewan became the Deputy Director General of EMBL. In this role, he assists the EMBL Director General in relation to engagement with EMBL Member States and external representation. Ewan led the analysis of the Human Genome gene set, mouse and chicken genomes and the ENCODE project, focusing on non-coding elements of the human genome. Ewan’s main areas of research include functional genomics, DNA algorithms, statistical methods to analyse genomic information (in particular information associated with individual differences in humans and Medaka fish) and use of images for chromatin structure. Ewan is a non-executive Director of Genomics England, and a consultant and advisor to a number of companies, including Oxford Nanopore Technologies and Cantata Bio. Ewan was elected an EMBO member in 2012, a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2014, and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015. In 2019, Ewan became a Board Member of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Ewan serves on a number of Scientific Advisory Boards (SABs), including the DKFZ, ICR, OICR, Institute Pasteur and Riken institute.
He has received a number of awards including the 2003 Francis Crick Award from the Royal Society, the 2005 Overton Prize from the International Society for Computational Biology and the 2005 Benjamin Franklin Award for contributions in Open Source Bioinformatics.