Allan is an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Medicine, Section of Genetic Medicine. He joined the UChicago faculty in 2011.
Allan started the group at Harvard University as a Bauer Fellow at the FAS Center for Systems Biology, where he spent five years. He received his Ph.D. in Computation and Neural Systems from Caltech under the guidance of Frances Arnold.
Prior to entering science, Allan worked at Trilogy for seven years in multiple roles, the last as an HR director responsible for training and leadership development as director of Trilogy University.