Alexander Garruss, Ph.D., is an inventor and biotechnology researcher, and most recently served as the Principal Scientist of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) at Sail Biomedicines, a Flagship Pioneering Company. Prior to Sail Biomedicines, Garruss was a Senior Scientist of Machine Learning at Exact Sciences. He returned to the Stowers Institute in Spring 2024. 

Garruss earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in the Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics (BIG) program, conducting his research in the laboratory of George Church, Ph.D., Garruss utilized tools from large-scale DNA synthesis, high-throughput DNA sequencing, and advanced AI/ML algorithms toward understanding both protein-DNA interactions and RNA-RNA interactions in living cells.

Prior to Harvard, Garruss was a bioinformatics programmer/analyst for the Stowers Institute conducting studies about regulatory genomics and chromatin biology. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Kansas State University and a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Kansas.

His academic contributions in computational biology and machine learning total more than 20 peer-reviewed publications and 3,000 citations, appearing in journals such as Cell, Nature Methods, and Nature Genetics. Garruss is an inventor on several patents covering methods for polynucleotide synthesis, enzyme discovery, and the use of ribo-regulators for medical diagnostics.

Garruss has also served as scientific advisor and consultant to several biotechnology organizations. He is an emerging leader in the application of machine learning combined with massively multiplexed experimentation for fundamental scientific and medical breakthroughs.