Pixel-art cover — Science Stanley on the right in a white lab coat with a small purple rare-disease awareness ribbon, gesturing toward a glowing globe of the Earth on the left scattered with warm points of light and soft orbital arcs; an international community of rare-disease researchers and patients reaching across the world.
Rare Disease Active

Research to the People — Stanford

ML Scientist at Stanford Genetics and Stanford Medicine — building AI infrastructure for rare disease diagnosis, precision oncology, and scientific foundation models.

stanfordrare-diseaseprecision-oncologygenomicshackathon
Collaborators: Stanford Genetics · Stanford Medicine · Wilhelm Foundation · Mayo Clinic · CZI

Research to the People (RTTP) is a joint Stanford Genetics and Stanford Medicine program that unites clinicians, data scientists, patients, and researchers to tackle unaddressed problems in rare genetic illness medicine and precision oncology. My role: contribute AI expertise and leadership to a research program working on omic foundation models, viral phylogenetics, and onco-viral protein dynamics.

The proudest contribution from the RTTP era is the Rare Disease AI Hackathon — which Michael Brooks and I architected from the ground up. The concept: bring together diverse contributors from clinical science, genetics, ML, and patient advocacy to find high-impact places where AI raises the standard of care. What started with a small team at Stanford grew into an international movement. Partners now include Roche, HuggingFace, OpenAI, The Rare Care Center, and more. Hundreds of engineering volunteers across events. Dozens of countries represented. Six diagnoses in 48 hours at Mayo Clinic in 2025.

Despite moving on from RTTP, the mission continues through the Wilhelm Foundation, where I serve as Lead AI Architect. The Palo Alto garage spirit — "let's build it with a small, elite team" — scales when the garage is a global network of people who believe no disease is too rare to matter.