Evolutionary genetics of people and microbiomes.
Research Area
I study human evolutionary diversity and history using population genetics, combining large genome datasets with computational modelling to understand our present and past. My work ranges from exploring ancient contacts between humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans, to detecting signals of natural selection in the genome, to studying microbiome diversity. This last field has been a major focus over recent years, and I am currently working with traditionally hunter-gatherer communities to understand how microbiomes change during subsistence transition, and the evolutionary and transmission processes underlying local microbiome variation and differentiation. While my focus is on genomic data – human, microbial, domestic animals - I also work with social networks, GPS mobility data, and other biological data such as transcriptomics. I am interested in the processes driving biological diversity, and combine data and computational modelling and simulation to explore these. Ultimately, I’m interested in how this diversity relates to human phenotypic variation and health.
Project Interests
Student projects could be varied depending on mutual interests and backgrounds. For example: analysis of signals of archaic introgression in the genome to understand its frequently, social context, and biological impacts; analysis of microbiome strain diversity to explore transmission or to develop population genetic tools to investigate microbiome ecology; studying the relationship between social endogamy and genetic disease; studying the relationship between mobility and natural selection, or signals of natural selection in the genome more generally. Most of my projects combine genomic data (often from India or Indonesia) and modelling/simulation, but there is scope for purely theoretical work.
