Confirmed Speakers
Professor Nicholas Proudfoot
Emeritus Professor of Molecular Biology
Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford
Nick J. Proudfoot (NJP) is the Emeritus Professor of Molecular Biology at The
Sir William Dunn School of Pathology. Professor Nick discovered the mammalian polyadenylation signal (PAS) AAUAAA in the 1970s. At Oxford, his lab revealed that pre-mRNA 3′ end processing occurs co-transcriptionally, driving RNA polymerase II (Pol II) termination and showing that capping, splicing, cleavage, polyadenylation and RNA modifications all happen during transcription. With James L. Manley, he proposed the torpedo model and later identified XRN2 as key to Pol II termination. NJP also uncovered transcriptional interference (TI), linked to cancer and viral infection. Using tools like mNET-seq and POINT-seq, his lab established PAS as central to mammalian gene expression and explored long non-coding RNAs.
Rachael Godfrey
Senior Research Associate
Quotient Therapeutics
Rachael is a Senior Research Associate at Quotient Therapeutics, Specialising in genomic sequencing in the Company's High-Throughput lab. Previously she was a Senior Laboratory Specialist at Illumina. Rachael received a MSc in medical genetics and genomics from Oxford Brookes University and a BSc in biological sciences from Brighton.
Dr. Daniel Dancer
Senior Nanopore Account Manager
Oxford Nanopore Technologies
Dr. Daniel Dancer has over 10 years of experience in commercial roles, both as a Field Applications Scientist and an Account Manager, specialising in genomics and genetics tools and applications. Daniel support new and existing Nanopore customers in the South West of the UK in Academic, Clinical and BioPharma sectors.
Prof. David J Vaux
Professor of Cell Biology
Sir William Dunn School of Pathology
Professor David Vaux is an Oxford-trained scientist with a medical degree, followed by a doctorate in molecular cell biology, postdoctoral fellowships at Yale and an independent group leader post at EMBL, Heidelberg, before returning to Oxford to continue his research, teach medical students and involve himself in co-founding a biotech spinout and steering the education portfolio of the Medical Sciences Division. Among his diverse research interests is a focus on membrane-bound invaginations of the nuclear envelope and their relationship to programmed differentiation and cellular aging, which is the subject of his most recent work, reported today.
Dr Jonathan Seddon
Senior Territory Account Manager
Element Biosciences
Jonathan Seddon is Senior Account Manager at Element Biosciences with expertise in genomics, sequencing and cell biology. He has spent over 15 years in the industry holding various application scientist, sales and business development roles. At Element Biosciences he supports new and existing sequencing and multiomics customers in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Dr. Stephanie Rossnagl
Senior Territory Account Manager
Illumina
Stephanie has over 10 years’ experience in genomics, spanning academic research and commercial roles. With a PhD in cancer biology, she has both practical and theoretical expertise in next-generation sequencing technologies and now partners with Illumina customers to enable scientific discovery across a range of applications, including genomics and other multiomic approaches.
