Alumni
Ipsita Agarwal
Former graduate student and postdocia2337 at columbia.edu
Ipsita was a Ph.D. student in the Biological Sciences doctoral program, then stayed on for a few months as a postdoc. Her research focused on the causes and consequences of de novo mutations in humans. She is currently a postdoc in the group of Simon Myers, in the Statistics department of the University of Oxford.
Carlos Eduardo G. Amorim
Former postdoccg2827 at columbia.edu
Eduardo holds a B.Sc. in Biological Sciences and a M.Sc. in Animal Biology from the University of Brasília (Brazil). He completed his Ph.D. in Genetics with Prof. Francisco Salzano at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) in 2013 working on the influence of demographic, cultural, and adaptive processes on the genetic diversity of Amerindians during the settlement of the New World. In the lab, he was supported by a Science Without Borders fellowship from Brazil and studied the population genetics of Mendelian disease alleles. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Cal. State, Northridge.
Zachary Baker
Former graduate studentztb2002 at columbia.edu
Zach has an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from Cornell University where he concentrated in Genetics, Genomics and Developmental Biology (2014). He was a Ph.D. student in the Integrated Program in Cellular, Molecular and Biomedical Studies doctoral program. His research in the lab focused on the evolution of recombination in vertebrates. After a postdoc with Guy Sella at Columbia University, he is pursuing postdoctoral research with Richard Durbin at the University of Cambridge.
Celine Becquet
Former graduate student
Celine‘s research interests focused on developing and investigating computational methods to understand speciation, particularly in great apes. She is currently employed as a Bioinformatician at Qiagen.
Kevin Bullaughey
Former graduate student
Kevin was a double major in Computational Biology and Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania (2004). He then spent a year studying and traveling in China and Taiwan. He was the recipient of an NSF pre-doctoral fellowship, and of the Biological Sciences Division Harper Dissertation Fellowship. His primary research focus was on the evolution of regulatory regions, but he also worked on a variety of other questions about the effects of natural selection and recombination. See his rescape page for information on his regulatory evolution simulation software (Genetics 2011 paper). He is the founder of Wordswing and lives in Philadelphia.
Chen Chen
Former graduate student
Chen has an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from Tsinghua University, China (2012). A graduate student in the Biological Sciences program at Columbia University, she spent two years in the lab studying determinants of somatic and germline mutation rates, then worked with Yufeng Shen in the Dept. of Systems Biology. She is currently employed at Illumina.
Adi Fledel-Alon
Former graduate student
Adi holds a B.A. in Computer Science from Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel (2001) and a Masters in Operations Research from Cornell University (2003). She worked as a programmer for Carlos D. Bustamante at Cornell for two years before joining the lab. Her research concentrated on the causes and consequences of variation in human recombination. Adi received her PhD in winter 2011 and remained in the lab as a postdoc until Sept 2011. She now works as a data scientist in Israel.
Zachary Fuller
Former postdoc
Zach has an undergraduate degree in Biology from Creighton University. He received his PhD in Biology at Penn State (2017), where he worked with Steve Schaeffer. His dissertation focused on investigating the mechanisms establishing chromosomal inversions in populations of Drosophila, as well as analyzing adaptive evolution in African honey bees. Zach’s postdoctoral research focused on human genetics, funded by an NRSA, as well as on the population genetics of the coral. He is now employed as a Statistical Geneticist at 23andme.
Ziyue Gao
Former graduate student
Ziyue received a B.A. in Biology from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China (2010). She was a graduate student in the Genetics, Genomics and Systems Biology program at the University of Chicago and the recipient of the Biological Sciences Division Harper Dissertation Fellowship. She worked on modeling and identifying long-lived balanced polymorphisms, as well as on modeling and estimating neutral and deleterious mutation rates in humans. She was a postdoc with Jonathan Pritchard at Stanford and is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Yuki Haba
Former graduate student
Arbel Harpak
Former postdoc
Arbel studies questions linking genetic variation and evolution: What are the major forces guiding the evolution of populations? How do molecular mechanisms shape genetic variation? How does natural selection act on many traits and on many genes simultaneously? Arbel holds B.Sc. degrees in Mathematics and Physics, M.S. degrees in Ecology/Evolution and Statistics and a Ph.D. in Biology working with Jonathan Pritchard as a CEHG fellow at Stanford University. Arbel was a Fellow at the Simons Foundation’s Society of Fellows. He is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Ryan Hernandez
Former postdoc
Ryan obtained a B.A. with honors in mathematics from Pitzer College (Claremont, CA) in 2003, and completed his Ph.D. with Carlos Bustamante at Cornell University in January 2008. His research has focused on developing population genetic models of demography and selection to better understand modern day patterns of genetic variation. Ryan is currently a Full Professor at UCSF.
Joanna Kelley
Former postdoc
Joanna completed a dual degree in mathematics and biology at Brown University (2003) and obtained her Ph.D. in Genome Sciences with Willie Swanson at University of Washington (2008). Her research interests are focused around understanding the genetic basis of adaptation, in particular to extreme environments. While in the lab, Joanna was supported by an NRSA fellowship. She was then a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Carlos Bustamante at Stanford, and is now an Associate Professor at UCSC.
Amir Kermany
Former postdoc
Amir holds a B.Sc. in Applied Physics (Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran), M.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada) and a PhD in Mathematics (2010) (Concordia University, Montreal, Canada). While in the group, Amir’s research focused on developing a method to infer recombination patterns underlying non-disjunction in humans. He is now a data scientist at Shopify.
Kristin Lee
Former postdoc
Kristin received a B.S. in Biology and Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin (2013) and Ph.D. in Population Biology from the University of California, Davis (2018), working with Graham Coop. In her dissertation, she developed statistical methods to identify loci involved in convergent adaptation and distinguish among the processes that generate these patterns in population-genomic data. As a postdoc, she worked on the opsin gene duplication in primates. She is now a data scientist at Spotify.
Ellen Leffler
Former graduate student
Ellen has a B.A. in Biology from Amherst College (2006), an M.Phil. in Biological Anthropology from the University of Cambridge (2007), where she was a Churchill scholar, and a Certificate in Chinese Language from Lanzhou University (2008). For her PhD, she worked on a range of topics, from the evolution of recombination to balancing selection. She was a postdoc with Dominic Kwiatkowski at the University of Oxford and Cambridge University and is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah.
Jason Mares
Former graduate student
Jason majored in Economics & Mathematics and pursued a concentration in Statistics from Columbia University (2020). He studied a QMSS master at Columbia for the 2020-2021 academic year. For his MA thesis, he characterized the prediction accuracy of polygenic scores with increased genetic distances.
Daniel Matute
Former postdoc
Daniel obtained a dual degree in biology and microbiology at Universidad de Los Andes in Columbia (2005). He completed his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution with Jerry Coyne at the University of Chicago in Spring 2010, focused on the genetic architecture of reproductive isolation in different species of Drosophila. He was then a University of Chicago fellow in the group, working primarily on the evolution of reproductive isolation via reinforcement. In 2014, he was awarded the Society for the Study of Evolution’s Dobzhansky prize. He is now an Associate Professor at UNC.
Cord Melton
Former programmer
Cord Melton worked as a computer programmer in the group for close to two years. She has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Chicago.
Wynn Meyer
Former graduate student
Wynn received a B.S. in Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology track, from Yale University (2004). She worked as an AmeriCorps VISTA and then as a technologist for the American Red Cross Molecular Lab in Philadelphia before coming to the University of Chicago. For her doctoral work, she examined evidence for transmission distortion in the human genome, and worked with genome-wide sequencing data from two related lemur species in order to learn about how population sizes have changed over time, as well as to find genetic changes that may account for inter-species pigmentation differences. After her postdoctoral training and a AAAS fellowship, she became an Asst. Professor at Lehigh University.
Priya Moorjani
Former postdocPriya has an undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering from University of Mumbai and M.S. in Bioinformatics from George Washington University. She received her Ph.D. (2013) in Genetics from Harvard University (advised by David Reich and Nick Patterson). During her dissertation, she developed novel methods and approaches for analyzing genomic data to learn about population history, particularly focusing on populations of mixed ancestry such as West Eurasians and South Asians. For her postdoc, Priya investigated mutation and recombination processes in primates and their use as molecular clocks. She is now an Assistant Professor in the MCB Dept. of the University of California, Berkeley.
Hakhamanesh Mostafavi
Former graduate studentHakhamanesh holds an undergraduate degree in Polymer Engineering from Tehran Polytechnic (2010) and M.S. in Macromolecular Materials from Royal Institute of Technology, KTH (2012). Upon arrival at Columbia, he developed models of membrane fusion during neurotransmitter release. He then completed a Ph.D. in the lab, working on natural selection in contemporary humans and polygenic scores. He is an Assistant Professor at NYU Med.
Susan Ptak
Former postdoc
Susan was a postdoc in the lab at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, after receiving a Ph.D. with Marc Feldman at Stanford. She worked on demographic inference in humans, and on the evolution of recombination in apes.
Keerthi Sannareddy
Former programmer
Keerthi received her Bachelors degree in Biotechnology from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, India (2009) and her Masters in Bioinformatics from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (2011). After graduating, she worked as a Research Associate for the Bioinformatics Core at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where she focused on the analysis and interpretation of next generation sequencing data. She worked in the group for close to two years, on the analysis of genome resequencing data from flies and birds, and is currently a programmer at Imperial College in the UK.
Luke Sarre
Technician
lukesarre at googlemail.com
Luke is interested in the relationship between phenotypes, variation, and the evolutionary forces that cause them. He graduated from the University of Sheffield with a Bachelors (2016) and Masters (2017) degree in Molecular Biology, and worked at the Salk Institute of Biological Sciences exploring polymer synthesis in plants. He worked as a technician between the Przeworski and Andolfatto labs for a year, and is now pursuing a PhD in London.
Molly Schumer
Former postdoc
Molly studied biology at Reed College and did her PhD in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Princeton, working with Peter Andolfatto and Gil Rosenthal. Her dissertation focused on understanding the prevalence of hybridization and its role in evolutionary processes. For her postdoctoral research, Molly investigated the impacts of basic genetic processes, such as recombination mechanisms, on hybrid evolution. She is now an Assistant Professor at Stanford University.
Laure Ségurel
Former postdoc
Laure received a Masters in Evolutionary Biology at the University of Paris 7 – Denis Diderot (2006) and a PhD in Population Genetics with Evelyne Heyer and Renaud Vitalis at the National Museum of Natural History of Paris (2010). Her doctoral research focused on understanding the influence of lifestyle on demographic history, as well as on local adaptation of Central Asian human populations. For her postdoc, Laure worked on the molecular evolution of PRDM9, as well as on balancing selection in primates, notably at ABO. She is now a CNRS researcher in Lyon.
Jihanne Shepherd
Former Undergraduate Researcher
jjs2273 at columbia.edu
Jihanne was a Science Research Fellow of the Columbia College class of 2021. She majored in Biochemistry with a concentration in Computer Science in the Department of Biological Sciences and worked on coral genomics in the Przeworski lab.
Sonal Singhal
Former postdoc
Sonal graduated with her B.A. in Biology from Washington University in St. Louis and with her Ph.D. (2013) from University of California, Berkeley, advised by Craig Moritz. In her dissertation, Sonal studied speciation and hybridization in five co-occurring hybrid zones, all of which formed between Australian rainforest lizards. She spent one year in the lab, studying the evolution of recombination in wild populations of birds. She is now an Associate Professor in Biology at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
Alva Strand
Former graduate student
Alva received her B.A. in Molecular Biology with a Certificate in Biophysics from Princeton University (2013), and an MA from the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, studying patterns of mutation in human pedigrees. She was then employed at Lighthouse Datalab, before starting a PhD in ornithology at the University of Oklahoma.
Kosuke Teshima
Former postdoc
Kosuke worked on modeling classic selective sweeps and sweeps on standing variation. He is now a faculty member at Kyushu University in Japan.
Aarti Venkat
Former programmer
Aarti completed her Bachelors (Double major) in Life sciences and Biochemistry from St. Xavier’s college in Mumbai, India (2006), followed by a Masters in Biochemistry from the University of Mumbai, India (2008) and a Masters in Bioinformatics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2010). She worked as a programmer in the group for 18 months, building pipelines for evolutionary genomics analyses. She then completed a PhD in Human Genetics at the University of Chicago, working in the lab of Joe Thornton. She now works as a data scientist at Tempus, in Chicago.
Amy Williams
Former postdoc
Amy holds dual B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Utah (2003), and S.M. (2005) and Ph.D. (2010) degrees in Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2009-2013, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School, advised by David Reich and David Altshuler. Her research interests focus on understanding haplotypes: their structure, genealogy, and evolution, as well as on computational haplotype-based methods development. Her current research focuses on meiotic recombination, including the rate and biological processes underlying gene conversion formation. Amy is now an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology at Cornell.
Daniel Wilson
Former postdoc
Danny holds a B.A. in Biological Sciences and D.Phil. in Evolutionary Genetics from Oxford. His research interests centre on the application of population genetics tools to solving problems in human infectious diseases, and detecting the signature of natural selection within populations. Danny is now an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford, where he leads a research group in the Big Data Institute.
Felix Wu
Former graduate student and postdoc
Felix received an undergraduate degree in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University (2014), with a minor in Mathematics. He was a PhD student in the Integrated Program in Cellular, Molecular and Biomedical Studies, focused on how the sex bias in germline mutation arises and evolves in vertebrates. He is currently pursuing postdoctoral research with Robin Hopkins at Harvard.