Alex Blocker, PhD

Alex leads Foresite Lab’s technology platform and product management groups, including our efforts in data science, bioinformatics, engineering, and AI. Prior to Foresite Labs, Alex worked at the interface of machine learning and clinical science at GRAIL, a life sciences company working to detect cancer early when it can be cured. At GRAIL, he drove development of classification methodology and machine learning-based somatic variant calling capabilities. Previously, Alex was technical lead for computational biology at Verily, where he led analysis of multi-omic studies in multiple disease areas, contributed to the design of the Baseline study, and built core elements of data infrastructure. He came to Google [x] and Verily after working as part of the quantitative team behind Google AdWords, following an earlier career in quantitative finance.

Alex holds a Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University and an M.A. in economics from Boston University. In addition to computational biology, his research over the last 10 years has included statistical theory, asset valuation, astrophysics, information networks, and distributed computational methods for AI and machine learning.