Keynote Speakers

Kaja Helvik Skjærven

Senior Researcher, Institute of Marine Research (Norway)

Dr. Kaja H. Skjærven is a senior researcher at the Institute of Marine Research in Norway, with a special interest in fish nutrition, embryonic development, and epigenetic regulation. With a degree in environmental physiology, she investigates how factors like diet, temperature and contaminants influence DNA methylation and gene regulatory mechanisms across generations in salmon, cod, and zebrafish. Her projects especially explore how environmental factors influence tissue nutritional status during maturation and how parental environments shape offspring phenotypes. Recent publications highlight intergenerational effects of spawning season, ocean warming, and nutrient availability, providing insight into how fish adapt to climate driven environmental changes and evolving aquaculture practices.

Gen Hua Yue

Senior Principal Investigator and Program Director, Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (Singapore)

Dr. Gen Hua Yue is Senior Principal Investigator and Program Director at Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, Singapore, leading the Molecular Population Genetics and Breeding Group. He earned his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Nanjing Agricultural University and Ph.D. in Agricultural Sciences at the University of Hohenheim, Germany. Since 1998, he has advanced molecular breeding, aquaculture genetics, and plant genomics across various species, including Asian seabass, tilapia, oil palm, and sugarcane. Dr. Yue has secured over SGD 38 million in funding, published 220+ peer-reviewed papers, serves on 10+ editorial boards, reviewed international programs, held adjunct professorships at NUS and NTU, and delivered 100+ invited talks globally.

Yann Guiguen

Research Director, INRAE Brittany-Normandy center Fish Physiology and Genomics Laboratory

Yann is a "physio-genomicist" based in Rennes, Brittany, France. He works at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE), where he uses molecular and genomics approaches to investigate the evolution of sex determination and sex differentiation mechanisms in fish. Yann combines genomics and large-scale whole genome sequencing projects with functional and expression-based approaches to explore the evolution of sex chromosomes and master sex determination genes. Yann is widely recognized in the fish community for his contributions to the endocrinology of gonadal sex differentiation, the evolution of sex determination systems, and the discovery of an unusual sex determining gene in salmonid species.