Leveraging genealogies for powerful inference of evolutionary processes driving human genetic diversity

Our DNA is rich in information about human history, from key migrations in a nation's recent past to the earliest days of our species. My research focuses on creating powerful new statistical techniques that can extract this subtle information from our DNA. We do this by using the genomes of people sampled world-wide to reconstruct the genealogical trees relating all humans. These have long been sought as the best achievable record of our shared genetic past, and the large-scale data resources now make this feasible. In my DPhil, I developed RELATE, which for the first time enables genealogy inference for the many thousands of available human genomes and for those of many other species. In this fellowship, I will leverage this technological breakthrough to address questions that were previously unattainable, pushing the envelope of our understanding of how our genomes have evolved and better equipping us to combat disease.