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Alexander Young is a Research Scientist with the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (SSGAC) at USC. Following degrees in Mathematics and Statistics and in Computational Biology at the University of Cambridge, Alex pursued a doctorate in Genomic Medicine and Statistics with Peter Donnelly at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford. During his PhD, he visited deCODE Genetics in Reykjavik and began to work out how to use large amounts of genetic data on families to tease apart genetic and environmental effects on traits. He pursued postdoctoral research with Augustine Kong at deCODE Genetics in Iceland and at the Big Data Institute at the University of Oxford. While working with the deCODE data, Alex developed a novel method for estimating heritability using genetic data on parents and offspring. He continues to pursue development of novel methodology to better analyse and understand the role of genetic variation in social and behavioral traits.