Dr. Mariano Alvarez is the co-founder and Chief Science Officer at Avalo, Inc., a crop biotechnology company using AI and evolution to generate crop resilience through gene discovery. Dr. Alvarez founded Avalo with his longtime friend, Brendan Collins, to address a shared concern for environmental issues in agriculture and a shared passion for technology and computation. He is a theoretical evolutionary biologist and computational geneticist. Dr. Alvarez’s interests span broadly across data science and biology, and he leads the majority of science and development efforts at Avalo. He is passionate about the role of translational science in creating sustainable solutions, particularly in agriculture, ecology, and conservation.