Alexander Stark

Alexander Stark, PhD, is a Senior Group Leader at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, where he has led a research group since 2008. His work focuses on the regulation of gene expression, including the roles of enhancers, silencers, transcription factors, coactivators, and corepressors. His laboratory combines functional genomics, systems biology, bioinformatics, and machine learning to understand how regulatory DNA sequences control transcription in development and disease.

Dr. Stark earned his PhD from EMBL and the University of Cologne and completed postdoctoral training at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His research has produced influential advances in regulatory genomics, including the development of STARR-seq for genome-wide measurement of enhancer activity and studies defining enhancer, promoter, and transcriptional cofactor specificity.

He is a member of EMBO and the Academia Europaea, an Adjunct Professor at the Medical University of Vienna, and a recipient of an ERC Consolidator Grant. Dr. Stark serves on scientific advisory, editorial, and organizing committees and has published extensively in journals including Nature, Science, and Nature Biotechnology.