San Diego, California, United States
Bioinformatics leader and Chief AI and Technology Officer (CAITO) with 20+ years driving omics data analysis for drug discovery and target identification. I bridge deep scientific expertise — NGS, mutation analysis, expression, pathway, and CRISPR screening — with hands-on technology leadership: cloud infrastructure, pipeline development, security, and compliance. Increasingly focused on AI adoption in life sciences, building solutions that make analytical outputs AI-ready and help clients integrate LLMs into their research workflows. Passionate about combining big data, cloud computing, and AI to accelerate scientific discovery.
Leading the AI and technology strategy at Monoceros Biosystems, a drug discovery bioinformatics services company, bridging cutting-edge computational methods with real-world pharma and biotech client needs. What I do: Architect and deploy AI agents for life sciences workflows, including genomics data analysis pipelines and automated client delivery systems built on cloud-native infrastructure (Google Cloud Run, GCS, BigQuery) Design and maintain end-to-end bioinformatics pipelines for NGS data analysis, including RNA-seq, differential expression, GSEA, mutation and structural variant analysis — delivering publication-ready insights to drug discovery teams Lead the integration of large language models and agentic AI into scientific workflows, enabling faster hypothesis generation, literature mining, and multi-omics data interpretation. Drive cloud architecture decisions for scalable, cost-efficient genomics workloads, including containerized tool orchestration (Nextflow, Google Batch) and data infrastructure design. Translate complex biological data into actionable client deliverables, serving as the technical bridge between computational platforms and wet lab drug discovery programs. Focus areas: AI agents · Genomics · NGS · Drug discovery · Cloud infrastructure · LLM integration · Bioinformatics services
- Lead the design, implementation, and maintenance of internal bioinformatics analysis pipelines, ensuring reliability and scalability across projects. - Oversee cloud infrastructure, security posture, and regulatory compliance, establishing a robust and audit-ready technology environment. - Author and maintain SOPs covering systems administration, IT operations, and tool governance. - Lead vendor evaluation and selection for operational tooling, including time management and project tracking platforms. - Spearhead company-wide AI adoption — implementing AI solutions for internal workflows and delivering AI/GPT-ready outputs and guidance that enable clients to integrate AI into their analysis results.
- Provided expert client support in NGS data analysis, covering somatic mutation profiling, copy number variation, gene expression, pathway analysis, and CRISPR sensitivity screens. - Designed and developed custom computational tools for drug synergy analysis, codon optimization, and bespoke client-specific workflows. - Delivered analysis support across both pre-clinical and clinical research stages.
Founder of CrustOceans, an independent development studio with a social and environmental component. CrustOceans collaborates with different non-profits through the donation of a percentage of the profits generated by its games and products. Our current portfolio includes Kubikol, a puzzle game already published for the iOS and Android platforms and two other games currently under development. As the founder and main developer my responsibilities include: Design and implementation of mobile phone games using Lua and the Corona SDK. Collaborate with graphic designers and musicians for the creation of the art included in the games. Maintenance of the web portal. Set up collaborations with non-profits.
Design and implement the Variant Interpretation Portal (VIP), an innovative data analysis platform that integrates genomic and phenotypic data and enables scientists to formulate new biomarker and target hypothesis. Through the use of the most modern technologies I have been able to develop a highly flexible and intuitive system that provides real time analytics to a wide variety of data types. This new platform have empowered bench scientists to perform analyses that were previously only accessible to computational biology experts. VIP is currently being used for drug sensitivity studies to help identify novel correlations between genomic alterations and different drug response measurements. VIP also supports different initiatives in the Inmuno-oncology and functional genomics space for target identification and validation. Other responsibilities include: Participate in the model characterization efforts within Pfizer. Supervise the development and data management of OASIS, the public cancer genomic portal at Pfizer. Data management for cancer genomic projects. Participate in the analysis and reporting of Pfizer internal datasets. Propose new methods and strategies for knowledge mining.
Lead the design and implementation of the OASIS cancer genomics portal (http://oasis-genomics.org). OASIS is a platform that allows scientist to access and explore genomics data from both public and proprietary data sets. OASIS provides multiple ways to visualize the available data as well as pseudo-programmatic access to the data through the use of the BioMart framework. Since it's inception OASIS has become the main platform to explore and share cancer genomics data within Pfizer and it is frequently used to validate biomarker hypothesis and for the identification of models with specific genomics profiles. Supervise the release of a publicly available version of the OASIS portal using Amazon Web Services. Development of automatic pipelines for analysis and annotation of mutations (SNPs and short indels) and Structural Variation events, with an emphasis in gene fusions (predicted both from WGS and RNA-Seq). Participate in the analysis and reporting of Pfizer internal datasets. Other activities include: Preparation of educational materials for OASIS and provide seminars to colleagues on how to use OASIS. Active participation in the organizing committee of an annual Pfizer "omics" workshops. Collaborate with Research Business Technology Unit in the management and set up of our hardware infrastructure (setting up computer cluster, management of data store system, test of cloud solutions).
Part of the development team of the BioSample database at the EBI: - Assist with web development - Data loading and standardization - Integration of data from other EBI resources. Data management: - Analysis of data integrity - Data integration and standardization - Assist user with data formatting and data upload Production management: - Analysis and identification of user requirement. - Configuration of software tools based on user requirement. - Definition of software development and maintenance cycles. - Lead weekly conference calls between the international development and production teams (spread aound 3 countries). - User support SIMBioMS systems development: - Design and implementation of new functionality in the existing software. - Development of sample data and software testing. - Assist in the design new software tools. - Web design Other: - Writing (documentation and scientific publications) - Teaching
Genome annotation of human genome assemblies (NCBI36 and GRCh37) using computational methods. Designed and developed an algorithm for the integration of manually curated gene annotation and computational based annotation. Development of algorithms for the computational based annotation of genomes. Quality control of genome annotations. Annotation of other Vertebrate Genomes.