Keynote Speakers

Caroline Dean is a British plant biologist who has strongly contributed to decode the mechanisms of plant flowering time through epigenetic mechanisms. Her work focuses on the molecular control of flowering time after long periods of cold and the adaptation of flowering mechanisms to changed climate conditions. Caroline Dean has made outstanding contributions to the study of developmental timing in plants and her discoveries have broad significance in the fields of epigenetics, post-transcriptional regulation, and molecular evolution. She has been recognised with multiple awards such as Genetics Society Medal, the Darwin Medal and the FEBS/EMBO Women in Science Award. Moreover, she has been appointed by various societies and institutions, including the British Royal Society and the European Molecular Biology Organization.

Paul Fransz is a Dutch plant biologist who has made a strong contribution to our understanding of how plant nuclei are organized. His expertise encompasses cellular biology, cytogenetics, molecular genetics and epigenetics. As a Principal Investigator at the University of Amsterdam, he has contributed to the development of new methods for the observation of chromatin and was the first to successfully paint specific regions of the Arabidopsis chromosomes. His contributions have been key to our understanding of nuclear processes such as chromosome organization during interphase and cell division. Additionally, he has played a key role in deepening our understanding of how nuclear reprogramming and nuclear architecture are regulated in different plant species in response to diverse internal and external stimuli.