Dr. Sylvain Costes is a Professor at the University of Pittsburgh in the Departments of Computational and Systems Biology and Radiation Oncology, and Director of SpaceSynBio, the Center for Space Biomanufacturing and Synthetic Biology within the Pitt Space Institute. He is also Chief Data and AI Officer at Vizzhy Inc., a biomedical AI company partnering with Pitt to develop digital-twin technologies for predictive health, early risk detection, and precision therapeutics by integrating multi-omics, imaging, wearable, and electronic health record data. Prior to Pitt, Dr. Costes spent nine years at NASA, where he served as Data Officer for the Biological and Physical Sciences Division and led major open-science and AI initiatives including GeneLab and ALSDA. His earlier career spans radiation biology, spatial statistics, and cancer risk modeling at UC Berkeley, the National Cancer Institute, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and includes co-founding a biotechnology startup focused on DNA damage biomarkers. His work bridges biomedical AI, space biology, and translational health, with an emphasis on large-scale, privacy-preserving data systems for human health on Earth and in space.
