Jeffrey Townsend

Biography
Jeffrey Townsend is a pioneering cancer evolution researcher whose work has established quantitative frameworks for understanding how cancers arise and evolve within the human body. His research transforms tumor genomic data into measurements of the evolutionary forces driving cancer initiation, progression, metastasis, and therapeutic response, revealing how cancer trajectories are shaped by mutation, natural selection, genetic interactions, environmental exposures, tissue context, and age. Townsend was instrumental in the founding and meteoric growth of the American Association for Cancer Research Cancer Evolution Working Group. As an inaugural Co-Chair-Elect and subsequently Co-Chair, he helped build an international community bringing evolutionary principles to cancer research and medicine and establish its scientific programming and dedicated AACR conference. His recent work connects cancer evolution with aging, investigating how somatic mutations accumulate across the lifespan and how selection changes with age—making the dynamic biology occurring within each person measurable and illuminating individual cancer risk, progression, and therapeutic vulnerabilities.

David Braun

Biography
Dr. David A. Braun is a medical oncologist, physician-scientist, and a principal investigator in the Center of Molecular and Cellular Oncology at Yale. His NIH and DOD/DOW-funded laboratory integrates computational and experimental approaches to understand how the immune system can be used to effectively target and clear cancer cells.

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Talk
Steering the immune system to attack cancer.
New therapies that harness the bodies immune system have shown promising results, even leading to cure in some patients. But current therapies lack precision - they turn the immune system on, but do not "steer" the immune system to specifically attack cancer. We will discuss cancer vaccines as a new approach.

Marco Durante

Biography
Prof. Dr. Marco Durante got his Ph.D. in physics in 1992 and has worked as postdoc at the NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (Houston, TX, USA) and NIRS-QST (Chiba, Japan). He is generally recognized as world leader in the field of particle radiobiology and medical physics and is co-author of over 540 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals (Scopus h-index=72). He is currently chair of the Particle Therapy Co-Operative Group (PTCOG). His main scientific achievement has been the assessment of the biological effects of accelerated charged particles using both in vitro systems and samples from humans (astronauts and cancer patients).

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Talk
To be decided
To be decided

Gary Miller

Biography
Dr. Miller is a leader in the field of exposomics, which studies the comprehensive and cumulative effects of physical, chemical, biological, and social factors that influence biology and health. His laboratory uses mass spectrometry-based exposomics to study environmental drivers of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cognitive decline, diabetes, and cancer. He founded the first exposome-based center in the U.S. and has been funded by multiple agencies, including NIH, DOD, and ARPA-H. Dr. Miller is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and serves on the advisory panel of the National Institutes of Health All of Us Research Program. In 2026, he was named the International Collen-Francqui Chair in Belgium, where he gave a series of lectures and facilitated research collaborations at Ghent University, Antwerp University, University of Liège, KU Leuven, and Hasselt University. He has also served as a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris.

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Talk
The exposome: environmental precision medicine
Using exposomics, it is now possible to measure environmental chemicals, medications, and endogenous small molecules at the same time, enabling exposome-wide analysis of any human condition. Dr. Miller will discuss how his team is using exposomics to better understand the cause, progression, and treatment of a range of diseases.

Charles Swanton

Biography
Charles Swanton is honored for pioneering discoveries revealing how cancers evolve, spread and develop resistance to treatment. Deputy Clinical Director at the Francis Crick Institute and Chair in Personalised Cancer Medicine at University College London, he leads the landmark TRACERx study, tracking lung cancer evolution in patients over time. His research has shown how genetic diversity within tumors shapes treatment response and relapse, advancing approaches to personalized therapy and blood-based monitoring. A practicing lung cancer oncologist and recipient of the 2026 Sjöberg Prize, Swanton has helped establish cancer evolution as a foundation for precision oncology.

Alon Wolf

Biography