GES 2025

Editing Across Life: Spectrum of CRISPR Applications

November 20th, 2025 @ Texas A&M Annenberg Presidential Conference Center

Lighting talks are limited to 5 minutes, and all slides should be in .pptx format. Posters should not exceed 48×36″. All topics related to genetic biotechnology are welcome!

Agenda for Nov. 20th:

Hour	Event
8:30-end of day	Registration (APCC Lobby)
8:30-9:00	Coffee and breakfast (APCC Lobby)
9:00-9:10	Opening Remarks
9:15-10:00	Keynote Speaker – Dr. Jonathan Diep
10:00-10:15	Coffee Break
10:15-11:00	Keynote Speaker – Dr. Karl Clark
11:15-11:45	Graduate Student Lightning Talks
11:50-12:10	A word from our sponsors
12:15-1:00	Lunch Break
1:00-2:20	Student Poster Competition
2:35-2:55	Travel Scholar Presentation
2:55-3:05	Coffee Break
3:05-3:50	Keynote Speaker – Dr. Ethan Bier
3:50-4:00	Speaker Transition
4:00-4:45	Keynote Speaker – Dr. Tom Clemente
4:45-5:00	Closing Remarks
7:00-8:00	Off-campus social (Murphy’s Law in downtown Bryan)

Our Keynote Speakers

Dr. Ethan Bier is a Distinguished Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at UC San Diego, and has pioneered research on developmental patterning, disease mechanisms, and super-Mendelian inheritance. His lab’s work spans from revealing how bacterial toxins disrupt human barriers to pioneering active genetics, a technology enabling biased inheritance of traits with major implications for controlling vector-borne diseases and antibiotic resistance.

Dr. Tom Clemente served as the Eugene W. Price Distinguished professor of Biotechnology in the dept. of Agronomy and Horticulture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His work has developed agricultural biotechnology techniques to enhance traditional plant breeding programs. Dr. Clemente also served as Director of the University of Lincoln-Nebraska’s Plant Transformation Core Research Facility for 29 years.

Dr. Karl Clark is an associate professor of precision gene editing in the Department of Animal Science at Texas A&M University. He has helped develop the Sleeping Beauty transposon system, co-founded Recombinetics, Inc., a livestock genome-editing company, and served as co-director of the Functional Omics Resource at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Clark has an interest in behavioral genetics and is currently using the zebrafish model to understand genes involved in vertebrate rapid stress response.

Dr. Jonathan Diep is a Principal Scientist and Group Lead in the Cell Line Development group at Amgen headquarters in Thousand Oaks, California, where he leads genome engineering efforts within Cell Line Development to optimize cell expression of Amgen’s diverse biological therapeutics. Jonathan received his Ph.D. at Stanford University School of Medicine in Dr. Jan Carette’s laboratory studying respiratory viruses.