Vivek Ruhela

Vivek Ruhela is a computational genomics researcher at Columbia University who develops statistical and interpretable artificial intelligence methods to explain how genetic variation contributes to complex disease. His work connects variants to genes, pathways, and biological networks, with a focus on Alzheimer’s disease and on making genetic findings meaningful across diverse ancestries. As a postdoctoral research scientist in the GiusTo Lab at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, he studies ancestry-aware genetics using approaches including genome-wide association studies, runs of homozygosity, eQTL integration, colocalization, and fine-mapping in Hispanic, Peruvian, Mexican, and non-Hispanic White cohorts.

Ruhela’s research also spans multiple myeloma, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, and other conditions. His publications and presentations include studies of genomic biomarkers, maternal and child genetics, and biologically informed machine learning. He creates practical research software and analytical resources, including miRPipe for small RNA sequencing, miRSim for sequence simulation, BRAINscape for exploring expression data, and SAGA, a pipeline for genome-wide association analyses.