Russ B. Altman

About

Russ Altman, MD, PhD, is a professor associated with the Stanford Helix Group, specializing in Biomedical Data Science and Medicine. His research focuses on biomedical informatics, integrating data science with medical research to advance understanding and treatment of health conditions. As a principal investigator, he contributes to the development of innovative approaches in biomedical data analysis, leveraging his extensive background in medicine and biomedical informatics to address complex biological and clinical questions.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Political Science
• Genetics
• Law
• Engineering
• Machine Learning
• Biology
• Data science
• Medicine

Selected publications

• On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2021 · 2169 citations

  AI is undergoing a paradigm shift with the rise of models (e.g., BERT, DALL-E, GPT-3) that are trained on broad data at scale and are adaptable to a wide range of downstream tasks. We call these models foundation models to underscore their critically central yet incomplete character. This report provides a thorough account of the opportunities and risks of foundation models, ranging from their capabilities (e.g., language, vision, robotics, reasoning, human interaction) and technical principles(…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Geographic Distribution of US Cohorts Used to Train Deep Learning Algorithms

  JAMA · 2020 · 237 citations

  This study describes the US geographic distribution of patient cohorts used to train deep learning algorithms in published radiology, ophthalmology, dermatology, pathology, gastroenterology, and cardiology machine learning articles published in 2015-2019.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Protein sequence design with a learned potential

  Nature Communications · 2022 · 173 citations

  The task of protein sequence design is central to nearly all rational protein engineering problems, and enormous effort has gone into the development of energy functions to guide design. Here, we investigate the capability of a deep neural network model to automate design of sequences onto protein backbones, having learned directly from crystal structure data and without any human-specified priors. The model generalizes to native topologies not seen during training, producing experimentally stab…

  DOI

• CRISPR-GPT for agentic automation of gene-editing experiments

  Nature Biomedical Engineering · 2025-07-30 · 53 citations

  articleOpen access

  Performing effective gene-editing experiments requires a deep understanding of both the CRISPR technology and the biological system involved. Meanwhile, despite their versatility and promise, large language models (LLMs) often lack domain-specific knowledge and struggle to accurately solve biological design problems. We present CRISPR-GPT, an LLM agent system to automate and enhance CRISPR-based gene-editing design and data analysis. CRISPR-GPT leverages the reasoning capabilities of LLMs for co…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• PharmGKB summary: lamotrigine pathway, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics

  Pharmacogenetics and Genomics · 2020 · 51 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Mitra-Ghosh, Taraswi; Callisto, Samuel P.; Lamba, Jatinder K.; Remmel, Rory P.; Birnbaum, Angela K.; Barbarino, Julia M.; Klein, Teri E.; Altman, Russ B. Author Information

  DOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01HL128170

  NIH · $3.0M · 2019

• NIH Grant R24GM061374

  NIH · $25.2M · 2020

• NIH Grant R29LM005652

  NIH · $550k · 1999

Frequent coauthors

• Teri E. Klein

  Stanford Medicine

  371 shared

• Scott C. Blanchard

  St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

  131 shared

• Caroline F. Thorn

  128 shared

• Michelle Whirl‐Carrillo

  Stanford University

  84 shared

• Ellen M. McDonagh

  European Bioinformatics Institute

  60 shared

• Katrin Sangkuhl

  Stanford University

  55 shared

• Howard L. McLeod

  Utah Tech University

  54 shared

• Li Gong

  Stanford University

  48 shared

Labs

• Helix GroupPI

  Not provided

Education

• Ph.D., Biochemistry

  Stanford University

  1989

• B.S., Biochemistry

  Stanford University

  1984

Awards & honors

• The Arthur Kornberg and Paul Berg Lifetime Achievement Award…
• Teaching Honor Roll, Tau Beta Pi (2020)
• Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award, Stanford Biosciences…
• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science…
• Stanford Medical School Mentorship Award, Stanford Medical S…

Similar researchers at Stanford University

• Russell Poldrackh-155
• Vinod Menonh-127
• Ronald Kaplanh-103