Olivier Elemento, PhD, is a tenured full professor of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) and Cornell University. Since 2017, he has been the Director of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine, a large multi-disciplinary institute that uses precision medicine technologies and informatics to uncover the molecular mechanisms of disease and individualize disease treatment and prevention. He is also the Associate Director of the Institute for Computational Medicine, Director of the Laboratory of Cancer Systems Biology, Co-Leader of the Genetics, Epigenetics, and Systems Biology Program in the Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Elemento’s research group combines Big Data, Artificial Intelligence with experimentation and genomic profiling to accelerate the discovery of cancer cures. Dr. Elemento and his team have published over 450 scientific papers in the area of precision medicine, genomics, epigenomics, artificial intelligence, computational biology and drug discovery.
Dr. Elemento has received several awards including the NSF CAREER Award, Siegel Family Award for Outstanding Medical Research, the Irma T. Hirschl Career Scientist Award and the Daedalus Fund for Innovation Award. He has mentored over 30 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, several of which have become faculty members, joined pharmaceutical companies, and two of his students were chosen as 30 under 30 in Healthcare by Forbes Magazine in 2016. Dr. Elemento and his research group have developed new assays and analytical pipelines for cancer genome and epigenome analysis, clinical sequencing and precision medicine. They led the development of the first New York State approved whole exome sequencing test for oncology. They developed new methods for assessing tumor-driving pathways, the immune landscape of tumors and predicting immunotherapy responders. In addition, they developed methodologies to repurpose existing drugs to target specific pathways, predict drug toxicity and identify synergistic drug combinations. Their research has been highlighted in broad audience media outlets, including Popular Science, CBS, Gizmodo, Huffington Post.