David A. Alagpulinsa, PhD

David A. Alagpulinsa, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Comparative and Cardiovascular Medicine and a core member of the Yale Center for Molecular & Systems Metabolism. His research program integrates human genetics, single-cell multi-omics, and translational experimental models to uncover how the hematopoietic system connects autoimmune, cardiometabolic, and neurocognitive diseases through shared genetic and molecular pathways.

David earned his PhD in Interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, where he investigated mechanisms that maintain genetic integrity in cancer, using multiple myeloma—a hematologic malignancy of B lymphocytes—as a model system. As a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, he expanded his focus to autoimmune disease, developing strategies to immunoprotect endogenous and transplanted pancreatic islets to treat type 1 diabetes without systemic immunosuppression.

He joined Yale in 2023 to establish the AlagsLab, an interdisciplinary research group dedicated to dissecting the genetic and regulatory architecture of type 1 diabetes and its pleiotropic links with neurocognitive and cardiovascular traits. The lab integrates statistical and molecular genetics, single-cell and multi-omic profiling, and translational experimental models to define hematopoietic mechanisms that mediate multi-trait risk, resilience, and comorbidity—advancing the long-term goal of translating genetic insight into precision therapies that heal across organ systems.