Alexander J. Titus | |
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 Titus in 2019 | |
| Education | |
| Occupation(s) | Biotechnology professional, strategist, entrepreneur |
Alexander J. Titus is an American AI and biotechnology expert, strategist, and entrepreneur notable for significant contributions to biotechnology, artificial intelligence (AI), and national security. [1] His expertise in integrating AI with biotechnology and security has distinguished his career in both the public and private sectors.
Titus pursued his undergraduate studies at the University of Puget Sound, earning a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and a Bachelor of Arts in Biology. He furthered his education at Dartmouth College, where he completed a Ph.D. in Machine Learning and Bioinformatics. [2]
Titus's career has been marked by a unique blend of roles across academia, government, and the private sector. His early roles included significant contributions in data science and bioinformatics at Dartmouth College. [3]
Titus began his government career at the U.S. Department of Defense as the Assistant Director (later known as Principal Director) of Defense Research & Engineering for Biotechnology. [4] [5] He was instrumental in launching biotechnology modernization programs at the DoD and the bioindustrial manufacturing institute BioMADE. He later joined the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI) as its first Chief Strategy Officer, where he developed pandemic response programs and led DoD-funded initiatives. [6] [7]
Titus moved to Google in 2021 as a Strategic Business Executive, leading the Cloud Healthcare & Life Sciences strategy for the public sector, [8] where he played a key role in launching and scaling pandemic response programs across the U.S. [9] [10] In 2022, he joined Colossal Biosciences as the VP of Strategy & Computational Sciences after a year on the scientific advisory board, [11] where he led teams in various fields including Genotype-to-Phenotype Data Sciences, AI, Machine Learning, and Bioinformatics Engineering. [12]
Titus's academic appointments include roles as a Principal Scientist at the USC Information Sciences Institute, [13] Research Faculty at the USC Iovine and Young Academy, [14] External Fellow at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, CA, [15] and Affiliate Faculty at the University of New Hampshire. [16]
Titus has been actively involved in shaping national policy regarding biotechnology and AI. [17] He has held positions on various policy and strategic committees, including the COVID-19 High-Performance Computing Consortium [18] [19] and the National Science and Technology Council at the White House.
In 2022, he became a congressionally-appointed Commissioner on the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, focusing on enhancing the U.S. defense and national security use of biotechnology. [20] [21] [22] The Commission is set to release its interim report by the end of 2023 and its final report by the end of 2024.
Throughout his career, Titus has served as an advisor to numerous startups and organizations, leveraging his expertise in computational product development and government strategy. [23] [24] He also launched the biotechnology publication Bioeconomy.XYZ at the start of the pandemic.
Titus is a native of Hood River, Oregon, where he grew up exploring the wilderness and developed an appreciation for being outdoors. In 2014, Titus, along with his fiancee, set off on a long-distance bicycle ride from Prudhoe Bay, AK, to Tiera del Fuego, Argentina, but did not complete their journey. [25]
The USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) is a component of the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering, and specializes in research and development in information processing, computing, and communications technologies. It is located in Marina del Rey, California.
The SANS Institute is a private U.S. for-profit company founded in 1989 that specializes in information security, cybersecurity training, and selling certificates. Topics available for training include cyber and network defenses, penetration testing, incident response, digital forensics, and auditing. The information security courses are developed through a consensus process involving administrators, security managers, and information security professionals. The courses cover security fundamentals and technical aspects of information security. The institute has been recognized for its training programs and certification programs. Per 2021, SANS is the world’s largest cybersecurity research and training organization. SANS is an acronym for SysAdmin, Audit, Network, and Security.
The United States National Security Council (NSC) is the principal forum used by the president of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and foreign policy matters. Based in the White House, it is part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, and composed of senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials.
Biosecurity refers to measures aimed at preventing the introduction and/or spread of harmful organisms intentionally or unintentionally outside their native range and/or within new environments. In agriculture, these measures are aimed at protecting food crops and livestock from pests, invasive species, and other organisms not conducive to the welfare of the human population. The term includes biological threats to people, including those from pandemic diseases and bioterrorism. The definition has sometimes been broadened to embrace other concepts, and it is used for different purposes in different contexts.
Accenture plc is an Irish-American professional services company based in Dublin, specializing in information technology (IT) services and consulting. A Fortune Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $64.1 billion in 2023. Accenture's current clients include 91 of the Fortune Global 100 and more than three-quarters of the Fortune Global 500. As of 2022, Accenture is considered the largest consulting firm in the world by number of employees.
The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (USCNS/21), also known as the Hart-Rudman Commission or Hart-Rudman Task Force on Homeland Security, was chartered by Secretary of Defense William Cohen in 1998 to provide a comprehensive review of US national security requirements in the 21st century. USCNS/21 was tasked "to analyze the emerging international security environment; to develop a US national security strategy appropriate to that environment; and to assess the various security institutions for their current relevance to the effective and efficient implementation of that strategy, and to recommend adjustments as necessary".
The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is an Indian government department, under the Ministry of Science and Technology responsible for administrating development and commercialisation in the field of modern biology and biotechnology in India. It was set up in 1986.
The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)' is a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) office responsible for the procurement and development of medical countermeasures, principally against bioterrorism, including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats, as well as pandemic influenza and emerging diseases. BARDA was established in 2006 through the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) and reports to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR). The office manages Project BioShield, which funds the research, development and stockpiling of vaccines and treatments that the government could use during public health emergencies such as chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) attacks.
Robert Orton Work is an American national security professional who served as the 32nd United States Deputy Secretary of Defense for both the Obama and Trump administrations from 2014 to 2017. Prior to that, Work was the United States Under Secretary of the Navy from 2009 to 2013, and before that served as a colonel in the United States Marine Corps; Work retired in 2001 and worked as a civilian at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) and the George Washington University in various positions relating to military and strategic study. From 2013 to 2014, he was the CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). After his time as Deputy Secretary of Defense, he went on to serve on the board of Raytheon. As of October 2023, he serves on the Special Competitive Studies Project's board of advisors.
The Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, abbreviated USD (R&E), is a senior official of the United States Department of Defense. The USD (R&E) is charged with the development and oversight of technology strategy for the DoD. The post has at various times had the titles Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, or Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E). The latter title has itself historically varied between the rank of under secretary and that of assistant secretary.
A military artificial intelligence arms race is an arms race between two or more states to develop and deploy lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). Since the mid-2010s, many analysts have noted the emergence of such an arms race between global superpowers for better military AI, driven by increasing geopolitical and military tensions.
Anurag Agrawal is an Indian pulmonologist, medical researcher, Dean of the Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University, and the former director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, a CSIR institution. Known for his studies on lung diseases, Agrawal has been a senior fellow of the DBT-Wellcome Trust. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Medical Sciences in 2014. He is also a recipient of the National Bioscience Award for Career Development of the Department of Biotechnology which he received in 2015 and the 2020 Sun Pharma Science Foundation award in Medical Sciences.
Michael John Kotsakas Kratsios is an American business executive and government official. He served as the fourth Chief Technology Officer of the United States at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In this role, Kratsios served as President Donald Trump's top technology advisor. From July 10, 2020 to January 20, 2021, Kratsios was also the Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.
The artificial intelligence (AI) industry in China is a rapidly developing multi-billion dollar industry. The roots of China's AI development started in the late 1970s following economic reforms emphasizing science and technology as the country's primary productive force.
Debasis Dash is an Indian computational biologist and chief scientist at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB). Known for his research on proteomics and Big Data and Artificial Intelligence studies, his studies have been documented by way of a number of articles and ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles has listed 120 of them. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences, in 2014. He was appointed as the director of Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar on 18 May 2023.
The regulation of artificial intelligence is the development of public sector policies and laws for promoting and regulating artificial intelligence (AI); it is therefore related to the broader regulation of algorithms. The regulatory and policy landscape for AI is an emerging issue in jurisdictions globally, including in the European Union and in supra-national bodies like the IEEE, OECD and others. Since 2016, a wave of AI ethics guidelines have been published in order to maintain social control over the technology. Regulation is considered necessary to both encourage AI and manage associated risks. In addition to regulation, AI-deploying organizations need to play a central role in creating and deploying trustworthy AI in line with the principles of trustworthy AI, and take accountability to mitigate the risks. Regulation of AI through mechanisms such as review boards can also be seen as social means to approach the AI control problem.
Caitlin M. Rivers is an American epidemiologist who as Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, specializing on improving epidemic preparedness. Rivers is currently working on the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the incorporation of infectious disease modeling and forecasting into public health decision making.
The COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium was a group of academic institutions and public health agencies in the United Kingdom created in April 2020 to collect, sequence and analyse genomes of SARS-CoV-2 at scale, as part of COVID-19 pandemic response.
The Artificial Intelligence Cold War is a narrative in which tensions between the United States of America and the People's Republic of China lead to a second Cold War waged in the area of artificial intelligence technology rather than in the areas of nuclear capabilities or ideology. The context of the AI Cold War narrative is the AI arms race, which involves a build-up of military capabilities using AI technology by the US and China and the usage of increasingly advanced semiconductors which power those capabilities.
The National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB) is an American bipartisan legislative commission created by Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022.
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