Alexander Vlahos

Alexander Vlahos is an Assistant Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. Alexander received his B.S. in Biochemistry from McMaster University and his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto under the supervision of Professor Michael Sefton. His Ph.D. work focused on developing an injectable bioartificial pancreas that could be delivered underneath the skin. He then transitioned to mammalian synthetic biology, where he conducted his postdoctoral work as an HFSP long-term fellow at Stanford University with Professor Xiaojing Gao.

His research integrates principles from synthetic biology, protein engineering, and tissue engineering to develop synthetic protein circuits for mammalian cellular engineering. The Vlahos lab synergizes synthetic biology and tissue engineering to create programmable gene and cell therapies for biomedical applications in regenerative medicine, cancer, and autoimmune disease. His lab has three main research themes, including 1) generating protein sensors to sense changes in internal cell states or the external microenvironment, 2) programming engineered cells to model cell-to-cell communication and elucidate the dynamics and expression of key signals that govern fibrosis and immune rejection, and 3) applying synthetic protein circuits to modulate the immune system and improve cell transplantation.