23andMe Research Institute Announces Inaugural Scientific Advisory Board

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 23andMe Research Institute, a nonprofit medical research organization, today announced the formation of its first Scientific Advisory Board. Composed of leading experts in genomics, artificial intelligence, gene editing, infectious disease, and clinical medicine, with experience across academia, government, and industry, the Board will provide independent guidance on scientific strategy and emerging opportunities, helping ensure the Institute's work stays innovative, rigorous, and ethical.

“This is an extraordinary group of scientific leaders who will help advance our mission to unravel the mysteries of the human genome and make those discoveries accessible to everyone,” said Anne Wojcicki, Founder and CEO of 23andMe Research Institute.

The Board will advise on research priorities, program design, grant applications, regulatory considerations, and partnerships at the intersection of genomics, artificial intelligence, and healthcare, all in support of the Institute's public-benefit mission.

Members of the 23andMe Research Institute Scientific Advisory Board include:

Russ Altman, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Altman is a Professor of Bioengineering, Genetics, Medicine, and Biomedical Data Science at Stanford, and past chairman of the Bioengineering Department. His expertise centers on applying AI, data science, and informatics to medicine, particularly understanding drug action at the molecular through population level and how genetic variation affects drug response. He's a Senior Fellow and Associate Director of Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered AI and co-leads an FDA Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation, and has advised the FDA and NIH directly on drug safety and AI policy.

Alexis Battle, Ph.D.
Alexis Battle is the Wu and Zhang Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. She serves as the Director for the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare and the Strategic Advisor for Partnerships of the Data Science and AI institute. Her research group uses machine learning to analyze large scale genomic and health data to understand how individual genetic variation affects the human body. They have made contributions to understanding how genetics interacts with environmental risk factors, temporal processes, and cell type to influence gene regulation and disease risk. Before joining Johns Hopkins, Alexis spent several years as a software engineer and engineering manager at Google. She earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2013 from Stanford University. Alexis has received awards including the 2022 JHU President’s Frontier Award, and was named a 2016 Searle Scholar and a 2020 Microsoft Investigator Fellow.

Robert Califf, M.D.
Dr. Califf is a cardiologist and Instructor in Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at Duke University. He served two stints as FDA Commissioner (2016–2017 under Obama, and 2022–January 2025 under Biden), and in between was head of medical strategy and policy at Alphabet, working across Google Health and Verily. He's one of the most frequently cited authors in biomedical science, with more than 1,300 peer-reviewed publications, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine, known especially for large-scale clinical trials and advancing real-world evidence and its integration with clinical trials into FDA regulatory decisions.

David Liu, Ph.D.
Dr. Liu is the director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare at the Broad Institute, a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. His lab invented base editing, prime editing, and continuous protein evolution (PACE), technologies now used by thousands of labs worldwide, with at least 32 base or prime editing clinical trials underway and 10 already reporting results. He won the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for developing precision gene editing, and he's currently pushing to make genetic therapies feasible for ultra-rare diseases through the nonprofit Center for Therapeutic Genetics.

Pardis Sabeti, M.D., D.Phil.
Pardis Sabeti is a Professor at Harvard University and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, a core institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Her lab has developed widely used algorithms and molecular tools to identify genetic variation that shapes human health, disease, and history, as well as methods for delivering new biomedicines to specific tissues. In infectious disease, her team has pioneered genomic and computational technologies to detect and contain deadly pathogens, including Ebola, Zika, Lassa, SARS-CoV-2, and malaria. She co-founded the African Center of Excellence in Genomics of Infectious Disease (ACEGID) with Christian Happi and together they launched Sentinel, a pandemic preemption system in West Africa that received a major MacArthur Foundation 100&Change grant in 2025.

Eric Topol, M.D.
Eric Topol is the Executive Vice-President of Scripps Research, the largest non-profit biomedical research organization in the United States, where he is founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, established in 2007. Clinically active as a cardiologist, he previously led Cleveland Clinic cardiology to become the leading heart center in the US. He was the founder of a new medical school at Cleveland Clinic, and was commissioned by the UK government to lead a review of their National Health Service. He has published over 1,300 peer-reviewed articles, with more than 400,000 citations, was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, and is one of the top 10 most cited researchers in medicine. In 2024, Topol was featured in the inaugural TIME100 Health list of most influential people in health in the world. He has authored four bestseller books on the future of medicine: The Creative Destruction of Medicine, The Patient Will See You Now, and Deep Medicine, and his new book, Super Agers. At Substack, he publishes Ground Truths, a weekly newsletter and podcast on cutting edge biomedical advances.

The formation of the Scientific Advisory Board reinforces 23andMe Research Institute's commitment to scientific excellence. The Board, which held its inaugural meeting earlier this month, joins the Institute's Board of Directors and Privacy Advisory Board in guiding the nonprofit as it works to advance human health through genetic research.

About 23andMe Research Institute
23andMe Research Institute is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) research organization that enables people everywhere to access their genetic information, learn about themselves, and participate in large-scale research for public good. The Institute unites people with the common goal of improving health and deepening our understanding of DNA, the code of life.

Media Contact
Aushawna Collins
23andMe Research Institute
aushawnac@23andme.org