Ayla Ergun is Senior Director of Data Science at Ginkgo Bioworks, a synthetic biology company that engineers microorganisms for industrial applications. She leads data science initiatives at Ginkgo Datapoints, focusing on AI-driven bioinformatics and computational biology.

Ayla previously held positions as Senior Principal Computational Biologist at Fulcrum Therapeutics, Senior Scientist at Biogen, and completed postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School. She has extensive experience in computational biology, genomics, and drug discovery.

Ayla has published over 34 research papers with nearly 4,000 citations, focusing on Alzheimer's disease, tumor immunology, and computational genomics. She is recognized for her work on BIN1 and Tau pathology, contributing to understanding neurodegenerative diseases.

At Ginkgo Bioworks, Ayla leads efforts to integrate AI tools like Biomni Lab into workflows, accelerating complex analyses from weeks to hours. She has also served as a Bioinformatics Specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Under her leadership, Ginkgo has validated AI platforms that reduced 10+ complex cell-painting and transcriptomic analyses to publication-quality results in hours. Her research has advanced understanding of rare diseases and therapeutic development across biopharma.