About The Festival of Genomics & Biodata

When the Festival of Genomics & Biodata began, we set out to build an exciting and inclusive event, with an initial vision of ‘Woodstock for genomics’. We hoped to get people excited about genomics, and raise awareness of its potential impact for patients.

As the use of genomics technologies continues to mature, the scope of the Festival has expanded too. The Festival is now a truly global event – creating a stage for world-leading speakers, ideas, companies and networking opportunities, never forgetting our main goal - to benefit patients.

The Festival has three main goals: (1) To be free for most of the audience to attend, (2) To bring together people from different sectors and disciplines to break down silos, and (3) To deliver meaningful change by providing attendees with strong content and interesting speakers.

Front Line Genomics organises the Festival of Genomics & Biodata, and was set up in 2014, following the death of the founder’s father to a rare form of cancer. We are a dedicated team of genomics and science enthusiasts, many of us with our own personal stories of how genomics has influenced our lives.

We work towards our goal of delivering the benefits of genomics to patients faster by creating interesting content and practical resources via our website, and producing webinars, events and reports. We typically support people in healthcare, research, pharma, investment, technology, policy and government, charitable and patient organizations, as well as, from time-to-time, patients themselves.

At Front Line Genomics, our main focus is on creating meaningful change in the lives of patients, not profit. Where possible, everything we produce is free-to-access so that we have more impact.

When the Festival began, Front Line Genomics originally partnered with a large organisation in the events sector, organizing Festivals in the UK, California and Boston, and launching www.frontlinegenomics.com.

Since then, we’ve supported more than 500,000 people via the Festival, conferences, meet-ups, our website, reports and webinars.

In 2018 we became an independent, privately owned business, free from the shackles of the private equity world and – most importantly – free to prioritise our social mission, and we haven’t looked back. 

We have successfully grown the UK Festival of Genomics to become the UK’s largest genomics event (and when the Festival was a digital event in 2021 and 2022, the world’s largest genomics event). We have since expanded to cover topics downstream of the genomics workflow (including the wider use of biodata), launching multiple digital events and webinars, and publishing several reports designed to support the genomics and biodata community.