SHENZHEN, China, Nov. 22, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The 19th Annual Meeting of the International Conference on Genomics (ICG-19) officially opened at BGI Group's Global Headquarters in Shenzhen. This annual event brings together over 100 leaders in the field of genomics from the U.S., UK, Denmark, Australia, Singapore, and China amongst others to discuss the latest advancements in global life sciences.

This year's conference builds on a strong legacy of fostering collaboration and innovation in the life sciences. Over the past 18 years, the conference has brought together more than 1,500 scientists, including Nobel Laureates, and has reached a global audience of over 15 million.

The opening day emphasized the critical importance of harnessing genomics to address some of humanity's most urgent issues. Several speakers shared their insights on the transformative role of genomics in tackling global challenges such as aging, public health, and biodiversity conservation.

In the opening speech, Dr. Siqi Liu, Chair of the ICG-19 Academic Committee, Co-founder and Member of the Board of Directors of BGI Group, and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of BGI Group, reflected on the history of the ICG. He underscored BGI's mission to go beyond research by focusing on advancing the application of genomics in industrial and medical fields.

Professor Huanming Yang, Chair of the ICG-19 Organizing Committee, Co-founder and Member of the Board of Directors of BGI Group, and Director-General of BGI, reflected on key milestones in genomics, emphasizing ethical considerations, open data access, and global collaboration. His speech explored transformative technologies such as single-cell transcriptomics and AI-driven sequencing, highlighting their applications in life sciences.

The four-day conference features a comprehensive program of talks on topics such as biodiversity, metagenomics and chronic diseases, frontiers in life sciences and bioinformatics, public health, population genetics and precision medicine, gene editing and biomanufacturing, and science for youth.

During the conference, the global data analytics company Clarivate honored several distinguished individuals named in the 2024 "Highly Cited Researchers" list. The honorees included Professor Huanming Yang, Co-founder and Member of the Board of Directors of BGI Group; Dr. Xun Xu, Executive Director of BGI Group and Director of BGI-Research; Professor Karsten Kristiansen, Member of the Danish Academy of Natural Sciences and Professor at the University of Copenhagen; and Jinmiao Chen, Associate Professor at Duke-NUS Medical School.