Meet the speakers: Beerformatics April 2026
Brussels, here we come!
After the success of our first edition, we would like to invite you to our second Beerformatics edition in Brussels next month!
Join us for an evening of fast-paced science, great conversations, and free beer from our sponsors Tout Bien Pils and Bar.on (or a soft drink).
| Date | April 21, 19:00 |
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| Location | FARI - AI for the Common Good Institute Brussels, 16 Cantersteen, 1000 Brussels |
We are excited to welcome four speakers who will present their latest research in cancer biology and spatial transcriptomics.
Sebastiaan Vanuytven - The Tumour Omics Universe: Decoding EMT, One Cell at a Time
Sebastiaan will explore how intrinsic regulatory circuits and extrinsic microenvironmental signals shape epithelial-mesenchymal transition, leveraging single-cell and spatial transcriptomics. Along the way, he will argue that bioinformatics is not merely supportive but central to modern cancer research.
Sebastiaan is a computational postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Cédric Blanpain at the Université libre de Bruxelles, applying and developing computational approaches to analyse tumour heterogeneity at single-cell resolution.
Zian Liu - Towards a reproducible single-cell workflow for epitranscriptomics sequencing
Epitranscriptomics is the study of epigenetic modifications on the transcriptome, which is highly relevant to disease contexts but understudied compared to its DNA and chromatin counterparts. Zian is currently leading the bioinformatics workflow development for an in-house single cell multiomics method for joint detection of RNA and N6-methyladenosine, and will present how they are overcoming specific data-related challenges in this context.
Zian received his PhD at Baylor College of Medicine in computational biology working on applying machine learning methods to various biological data modalities. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Université libre de Bruxelles who specializes in developing bioinformatics workflows for epitranscriptomics.
Kosta Stošić - From pipettes and pipelines
This talk tells the story of how a young wet-lab scientist found himself in the environment of the bioinformaticians and got interested in applying bioinformatics techniques to his own work.
Kosta is a PhD student in the Laboratory of Experimental Gastroenterology of Université libre de Bruxelles. He is also affiliated with Institut Jules Bordet.
Valeriia Gulaia - Spatial transcriptomics with Illumina flow-cells
Valeriia will talk about implementing the Seq-Scope protocol repurposing Illumina flow-cells to use them for spatial transcriptomics of human thyroid and thyroid organoids. They optimized the existed protocol to be used with PaxGene fixed tissues and now they consider processing and analysing more samples.
Valeriia is a postdoc in Vincent Detours lab (IRIBHM, Université libre de Bruxelles) specialising in computational biology.
Join us for an evening of science, discussion, and beers. Spots are limited, register now: Registration link