Yusuf Roohani

Yusuf Roohani is a leading researcher at the Arc Institute, where he develops machine learning approaches for modeling biological systems. He holds a visiting affiliation with the Stanford University Department of Computer Science, following his PhD in Computational Biology at Stanford under Jure Leskovec and Stephen Quake.

• Primary Affiliation: Arc Institute (Researcher)
• Visiting Affiliation: Stanford Computer Science Department
• Education: PhD in Computational Biology from Stanford

Roohani's research focuses on integrating artificial intelligence with biological experimentation to create predictive models of cellular behavior. His lab specializes in:

• Designing AI algorithms for genetic perturbation experiments
• Developing universal cell embeddings through cross-species RNA-seq analysis
• Building computational frameworks for large-scale biological data integration
• Creating foundation models for cell biology and therapeutic applications

His publications demonstrate a consistent focus on combining machine learning with biological discovery, particularly in:

• Predicting cellular responses to genetic perturbations
• Engineering transcriptional networks for precise cell fate control
• Developing AI agents for biomedical research automation
• Establishing benchmarks for causal inference in biological systems

Scientific Recognition:

• Best Poster Award at ISMB 2022
• SLAS 2023 Innovation Award
• Spotlight Presentation at NeurIPS
• Stanford BioX Interdisciplinary Initiatives Poster Award

Roohani mentors graduate researchers including UC Berkeley EECS MS students and Yale Computational Biology PhD students. His lab works closely with Stanford's Jure Leskovec and collaborates with institutions on developing scalable AI tools like PreciCE for cell fate engineering and GEARS for perturbation outcome prediction.