Sumner Magruder, Ph.D., joined the Stowers Institute in 2025 as the inaugural AI Fellow, advancing foundational biology through machine learning, data science, and explainable AI. Trained across computer science, biology, computational biology, and neuroscience, he holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Yale University and a Ph.D. in biology from Universität Hamburg. His research spans single-cell analysis, neural modeling, and biomedical machine learning, with a focus on making complex models interpretable and useful at the bench.

At the Institute, Magruder partners with Investigators and Technology Centers to help design algorithms, build scalable analysis pipelines, and create open-source tools that turn high-dimensional data into testable hypotheses. A key thread of his work disentangles biological “timelines”—separating changes due to normal development and aging from those that are disease-specific, including disorders such as Alzheimer’s.

Known for instructional innovation and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, Magruder is part of the Institute’s AI Initiative and is focused not only on inventing new methods, but sharing them so that labs across the Institute and the scientific community can accelerate discovery.