Alex Kotlar

Dr. Alex Kotlar is a geneticist, bioinformatics leader, and technology founder with nearly 20 years of combined experience across life sciences, healthcare, AI, and software engineering.

He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Bystro AI, a platform designed to make large-scale genetic data easy to search and analyse using natural language, similar to how people use Google or ChatGPT.

The core mission of Bystro AI is to remove technical barriers that prevent researchers, clinicians, and organisations from using complex genetic data effectively. The platform allows users to ask plain-language questions and receive fast, accurate results from very large genomic datasets.

Earlier, Alex worked at Pillar Biosciences Incorporated where he led teams responsible for machine learning algorithms, bioinformatic pipelines, data lakes, LIMS systems, and SaaS platforms  focusing on liquid biopsy assay development and interpretable denoising algorithms for cancer diagnostics.

Alex also worked as a Software Engineer and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Mass General Hospital, where he contributed to the Hail project and worked in the Neale Lab on large-scale statistical genetics.

He co-authored the paper “Bystro: rapid online variant annotation and natural-language filtering at whole-genome scale”, published in Genome Biology.

Alex was also a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Emory University, continued PhD research collaborations, and held several technical leadership roles, including Lead Developer at AMRAP4Life, Lead Programmer and DBA at Transmyt Inc, and IT Manager at Newman and Company. He also worked as an IT Consultant at Village Smokehouse and held teaching roles at Boston University.