HWAcc FIRE event: Computational Challenges and High-Performance Technologies for Life Sciences [Apr 24, 2026]

We would like to invite you to the next FIRE (FPGA Innovation Research Exchange) seminar that will take place at Wageningen University on April 24, 2026 and will focus on “Computational Challenges and High-Performance Technologies for Life Sciences”. The event will showcase talks from industrial and academic partners such as KeyGene, Wageningen University, SURF and various technical universities in the Netherlands.

This is the 7th event in the FIRE series, sponsored by 4TU.NIRICT and co-organized by the Hardware Acceleration Network NL and Wageningen University. The FIRE events aim to bring together FPGA/GPU practitioners, computer science and engineering experts, scientific computing experts, application owners and HPC providers, to exchange ideas and discuss solutions.

Programme outline

  • 09.30 - 09.45 Welcome & coffee

  • 09.45 - 10.00 Introduction

  • 10.00 - 12:00 1st Thematic Session: Life Sciences Compute Challenges and Solutions
    – Kumar Saurabh Singh (UMaastricht), Computational Challenges of Multi-Omics Data for Pathway Discovery: Lessons from MEANtools
    – Jan Erik Doornweerd (WUR), High-Throughput Phenotyping in Livestock Barns – Dairy Cows
    – Wijbrand Ouweltjes (WUR), Monitoring Broiler Behavior Using Surveillance Camera’s
    – Nikos Alachiotis (UTwente), Genomic Scans for Selective Sweeps Using Deep Learning and FPGA Acceleration

  • 12.00 - 13.00 Lunch

  • 13:00 - 14:00 Keynote: Maureen van Eijnatten (KeyGene), Revolutionizing Plant Breeding by Combining Systems Biology, Artificial Intelligence and Agents

  • 14.00 - 15.30 Lightning talks
    – Jeremie Vandenplas (WUR), Genomic Prediction on GPUs: A Micro-Benchmark
    – Elias Primetis (RadboudU), Computational Limitations in HiC Phasing and Scaffolding Approaches in Haplotype-Resolved Genome Assembly
    – Christiaan Baaij (QBayLogic), Clash HDL Acceleration of Compute Intensive Algorithms
    – Mohsen Safari (SURF), The Dutch High-Performance Compute Infrastructure
    – Alexander van Ittersum & Fons Prinsen (WUR), Anunna in the HPC Ecosystem: The Present and Future of Compute at WUR

  • 15.30 - 16.00 Coffee break

  • 16:00 - 17:00 2nd Thematic Session: Life Sciences High-Performance Technologies
    – Gina Alexopoulou (NTU Athens & SURF), High-Throughput Linkage Disequilibrium Computation on FPGAs: A Streaming Dataflow Architecture for Population Genomics
    – Christiaan Boerkamp (VLV Tech), Accelerating Non-AI Signal Processing Algorithms for DNA Analysis

  • 17:00 - 18.00 Borrel and networking

Sign up

Sign up: Please sign up for the event through the registration page https://forms.gle/SyHApPM3kSEEELVE9

Location

The event will be hosted at Wageningen University and Research, Building nr. 122 (Zodiac (A0107)), De Elst 1, 6708 WD Wageningen

When

April 24, 2026, 9:30 - 18:00