About

Stephen Ayers

Clinical genomics platform architect. PhD geneticist.

Eleven years at Stanford Health Care building the systems that carry genomic results from the sequencer to the chart — sequencing platforms, cloud pipelines on GCP, and discrete variant integration in Epic.

11Years at Stanford
4Lab domains supported
150+Clinical users
5,000+Tests per year

What I do

Most genomics informatics problems are not really informatics problems. They are translation problems: a variant representation the lab and the EHR each define differently, a vendor cutoff date Security cannot review in time, a data-sharing model Legal reads as a liability. I convene those groups and get to a build I can defend to all of them.

  • Platform architecture — instrumentation-to-EHR pipelines, discrete variant data models, hybrid cloud analysis on GCP (GKE, GCE), Docker and Kubernetes, Ansible, Linux (RHEL, Ubuntu)
  • Clinical lab systems — Epic Genomics Module and Beaker, Illumina BioInsight (BaseSpace, ICA, Emedgene), Clarity LIMS, NGS panel testing and reporting
  • Vendor and technical solutioning — build-vs-buy evaluation, vendor selection, MSA/BAA negotiation, security and risk review, application rationalization
  • Compliance — HIPAA, ISO 27001, FDA IVD/LDT guidelines, CAP inspection preparation

Selected work

Platform ownership across four lab domains

Led implementation and maintenance across Clinical Genomics, Molecular Pathology, Cytogenetics, and Pharmacogenomics — supporting 150+ users and more than 5,000 tests per year.

A migration with no room to miss

When Sunquest Mitogen and Agilent Alissa were both discontinued, I led vendor selection and MSA/BAA negotiation to replace the interpretation platforms with Illumina Emedgene against a hard vendor cutoff date. Zero clinical downtime.

Pharmacogenomics inside the clinical workflow

Drove clinical implementation of the SPIRA pharmacogenomics program — a 14-gene panel on PacBio sequencing with PharmCAT interpretation, surfaced to clinicians through Epic Best Practice Advisories.

Standing up a program from nothing

Led the technical implementation of Stanford’s Clinical Genomics Program from inception through its 2019 go-live for clinical exome sequencing, including the hybrid cloud analysis pipeline on GCP and support for the STAMP NGS cancer panel deployment.

Research enablement without the risk

Architected a Genomics Data Bridge for secondary research use and AI-safe data enablement.


Before Stanford

Personalis, Inc. — Clinical Project Manager, managing customer genomic sequencing projects end to end and directing sample-tracking software development.

Houston Methodist Research Institute — Genomics Core Manager, running a high-throughput core across NGS, microarrays, and LIMS, and architecting its bioinformatics compute infrastructure.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — postdoctoral research on SATB1 chromatin architecture and gene regulation, with contributions to DOE- and NASA-funded grant proposals.


Stanford Cornell University University of Glasgow Union College Personalis Houston Methodist Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Credentials

  • PhD, Biochemistry and Genetics — Cornell University, Division of Nutritional Sciences (2007)
  • MSc, Bioinformatics — University of Glasgow (2001)
  • BA, Biology and Political Science, cum laude — Union College (2000)
  • CISSP — Certified Information Systems Security Professional
  • CCSP — Certified Cloud Security Professional
  • PMP — Project Management Professional
  • Certificate in Regulatory Affairs, Medical Devices and IVDs — UC Santa Cruz (2019)

Get in touch

I am currently exploring roles in clinical genomics and molecular pathology systems, clinical informatics, healthcare IT security and compliance, and genomics cloud infrastructure.

[email protected] · linkedin.com/in/sdayers