Euan Ashley


Euan Angus Ashley is Professor of Medicine and Genetics at Stanford University in California. He is director of the Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease, the Clinical Genomics Program and Co-Director of the Stanford Data Science Initiative.

Education and early life

Ashley was born in Scotland and attended the University of Glasgow where he graduated in Physiology and Medicine. He completed residency training in Medicine at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and received his Doctorate from Christ Church College.
Ashley learned saxophone as a teenager joining the Strathclyde Youth Jazz Orchestra and forming a jazz saxophone quartet with members of its saxophone section. At Oxford, Ashley led the Oxford University Jazz Orchestra. He toured internationally with all groups and released three albums including one with the bebop altoist Peter King.

Research

Ashley is best known for his work translating insight from the human genome to medicine. In 2009, he led the team that carried out the first medical interpretation of a human genome. The work was featured at the Unlocking Life's Code Exhibit of the Smithsonian museum and recognised at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy "Data to Knowledge to Action" event. In 2014, Ashley became co-chair of the steering committee of the NIH Undiagnosed Diseases Network. The UDN was able to establish a diagnosis 132 of the 382 patients who had a complete evaluation, yielding a rate of diagnosis of 35%. Ashley is a recipient of the National Innovation Award from the American Heart Association and a National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award.
Ashley is also co-Principal Investigator of the MyHeart Counts study, a launch partner for Apple Inc's ResearchKit platform in 2015. The first tranche of results from this study was published in 2017.

Publications

Ashley has authored one textbook, Cardiology Explained, and over 120 peer reviewed publications.

Press coverage

Ashley has appeared on National Public Radio in the United States as well as the BBC, Japanese national television and the Guardian newspaper discussing genome sequencing and precision medicine. His work has been covered in print by the Wall Street Journal, Technology Review, the Telegraph and others. The first traunch of UDN cases was covered by National Public Radio and the New York Times. He has been interviewed multiple times for local and national news.

Companies

Personalis

In 2012, Ashley co-founded Personalis, a genome-scale diagnostics company with Stanford colleagues Russ Altman, Atul Butte, Mike Snyder and businessman John West. West was the former CEO of Solexa and managed the sale of its core business to Illumina, Inc.

Deepcell

Ashley is scientific co-founder of Deepcell, a company developing non-invasive diagnostics based on imaging blood cells.

Silicon Valley Exercise Analytics

Ashley is co-founder and Chairman of the Board at Silicon Valley Exercise Analytics, a sports intelligence company that combines physical, subjective and biological data to offer optimized training, performance and recovery recommendations for athletes and teams

Personal life

Ashley lives in Stanford, California with his wife, Fiona, and their three children.