Alex is the Director for Scholarly Communication within Microsoft's External Research division, where he oversees several projects related to researcher productivity tools, semantic information capture, and the interoperability of information systems. Alex holds a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy from U.C. Berkeley, and a Masters of Librarianship degree from the University of Washington.

During his career at Microsoft, Alex has managed the corporate search and taxonomy management services; has shipped a SharePoint-based document and workflow management solution for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance; and served as Senior Program Manager for Windows Search in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Prior to joining Microsoft, Alex held Systems Librarian, Engineering Librarian, Philosophy Librarian, and technical library positions at the University of Washington, the University of Michigan, and U.C. Berkeley.