News

Jan 9, 2025
New paper on Quickdraws, “A scalable variational inference approach for increased mixed-model association power”, is now published in Nature Genetics. The Quickdraws software is availble here, summary statistics are available here.
Nov 29, 2024
New collaborative papers on ancient DNA analysis of early farmers of central Europe (Gelabert et al. Nature Human Behaviour, news coverage) and on Genomics England genotype imputation of the UK Biobank (Shi et al. Nature Genetics); preprints on the genetic origins of the Indo-Europeans (Lazaridis et al. bioRxiv) and on the causes and consequences of DNA repeat expansions (Hujoel et al. bioRxiv).
Nov 23, 2024
Zoi gave a featured plenary talk (15 out of ~3,400 submitted abstracts) on inferring genealogical relationships between ancient and modern genomes at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG 2024) meeting in Denver (CO). She also received a Trainee Research Excellence Award (6 out of ~900 trainee abstracts). Congratulations!
Oct 25, 2024
Pier gave talks at the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE 2024), the PRIMED Consortium, and the Conservation Genomics conference.
Oct 1, 2024
Marius Weidmann (DPhil student), Yining Fan (DPhil student), and Alex Allmont (research software engineer) joined the group.
Aug 4, 2024
Two new preprints from our group: Gunnarsson et al. “A scalable approach for genome-wide inference of ancestral recombination graphs” bioRxiv on the Threads method for fast inference of ancestral recombination graphs (software here); and Zhu, Kalantzis et al. “Fast variance component analysis using large-scale ancestral recombination graphs” bioRxiv on the ARG-RHE method for ARG-based variance component analysis (software here).
Jun 4, 2024
Pier gave talks at the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG 2024) meeting, the Machine Learning for Evolutionary Biology conference, and at the Probabilistic Modeling in Genomics (ProbGen 2024) conference, where he chaired a session on ancestral recombination graphs.
Mar 14, 2024
Arni and Romain defended their thesis!
Dec 28, 2023
A new paper on EpiNN, “Genome-wide classification of epigenetic activity reveals regions of enriched heritability in immune-related traits”, was published in Cell Genomics.
Dec 1, 2023
Our paper, “Haplotype-based inference of recent effective population size in modern and ancient DNA samples”, is now published in Nature Communications. The HapNe-LD and HapNe-IBD programs are available here.
Nov 23, 2023
Arni gave a talk and Hrushi presented a poster at ASHG 2023 in Washington, DC; Pier gave a talk at Institut Pasteur in Paris.
Sep 20, 2023
Our paper on CoalNN, “Inference of coalescence times and variant ages using convolutional neural networks”, was published in MBE. Also, new collaborative paper on large-scale synthetic data generation and preprint on aDNA analysis of early farmers of central Europe.
Jun 20, 2023
Arni, Yiorgos, Sinan, Hrushi, and Pier taught a session on genome-wide association studies (GWAS) at the Oxford Statistical Genomics Summer School.
May 1, 2023
New paper, “Biobank-scale inference of ancestral recombination graphs enables genealogical analysis of complex traits”, out in Nature Genetics. Also see this News and Views article by Kelley Harris, which gives a less technical overview of this work. (News coverage here.) The ARG-Needle and ASMC-clust programs are available here.
Jan 15, 2023
Miriam, Yiorgos, and Sinan defended their thesis!
Oct 29, 2022
Arni, Hrushi, Miriam, Yiorgos, and Zoi presented their work at ASHG 2022. Zoi’s talk received an Epstein Trainee Finalist Award for Excellence in Human Genetics Research (top 2.6% scored abstracts). Congrats!
Oct 1, 2022
Jaromir Sant (Postdoctoral Research Assistant) and Jiazheng Zhu (DPhil student) joined the group.
Aug 10, 2022
Brian and Juba defended their thesis!
Aug 4, 2022
New preprint, “Haplotype-based inference of recent effective population size in modern and ancient DNA samples” by Fournier et al., available on bioRxiv.
Jul 15, 2022
Pier gave a talk at UCLA’s Computational Genomics Summer Institute.
Mar 28, 2022
Miriam, Pier, Romain, Yiorgos, and Zoi presented their work at ProbGen 2022.
Nov 4, 2021
New preprint, “Biobank-scale inference of ancestral recombination graphs enables genealogy-based mixed model association of complex traits” by Zhang et al., available on bioRxiv.
Oct 13, 2021
At ASHG 2021, Brian, Miriam, and Sinan will be presenting their work. Miriam and Sinan received Reviewers’ Choice Awards, and Brian received an Epstein Trainee Semifinalist Award for Excellence in Human Genetics Research. Congrats!
Oct 1, 2021
Hrushikesh Loya (DPhil student) joined the group.
Sep 1, 2021
New paper in collaboration with Chunxiao Song et al. on cell-free DNA analysis for cancer detection.
Jan 11, 2021
Arjun Biddanda (Postdoctoral Research Assistant) joined the group.
Nov 30, 2020
FastSMC paper is out in Nature Communications! Software is available here. The paper has also been selected as one of Nature Communications’ Editors’ Highlights.
Oct 27, 2020
Yiorgos and Pier gave presentations at ASHG 2020 (Session 028 and Session 037, also see news coverage of their talks). Yiorgos also received an Epstein Trainee Semifinalist Award for Excellence in Human Genetics Research. Congratulations Yiorgos!
Oct 5, 2020
Árni Gunnarsson (DPhil student) joined the group.
Aug 24, 2020
Pier gave a talk at the Oxford Machine Learning Summer School.
Jun 1, 2020
Juba will present his work on IBD detection and UKBB analysis at ESHG 2020. His abstract was one of 5 (out of ~2800 submissions) selected for the “What’s New?” Highlight Session. He will be one of 5 recipients of the ESHG Fellowships of Excellence for Young Investigators. Congrats Juba!
Apr 21, 2020
New FastSMC preprint by Nait Saada et al. available on bioRxiv.
Feb 24, 2020
We are currently recruiting two ERC/NIH-funded postdoctoral research associates! Please get in touch if interested.
Jan 20, 2020
New paper out! Collaboration with Yuki Okada et al. on applying ASMC to analyze selection and complex traits in 170k Japanese genomes.
Jan 6, 2020
Fergus Cooper (Research Software Engineer) joined the group.
Oct 17, 2019
We built a website to visualize genetic relatedness during the past 1,500 years in the UK: https://ukancestrymap.github.io/.
Oct 7, 2019
Romain Fournier, Yiorgos Kalantzis, and Miriam Stricker (DPhil students) joined the group.
Sep 3, 2019
Our group was awarded an ERC Starting Grant! In addition to the ERC, we received awards from the US NIH, EPSRC, and Wellcome Trust.
Jul 23, 2019
Juba will give a platform talk about his work on IBD detection and UKBB analysis at ASHG 2019 (Houston, TX), where he will also receive an Epstein Trainee Semifinalist Award for Excellence in Human Genetics Research. Congratulations Juba!
Jul 8, 2019
Pier gave a talk at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics.
Oct 1, 2018
Juba Nait-Saada, Brian Zhang and Sinan Shi (DPhil students) joined the group.
Sep 11, 2018
Pier gave a talk at the Max Planck IMPRS for Evolutionary Biology Retreat.
Aug 13, 2018
ASMC paper is out in Nature Genetics! Free full-text, ASMC software & data.
Apr 16, 2018
Pier gave a talk at Amazon Research in Berlin.
Mar 7, 2018
New preprint available on bioRxiv.
Aug 16, 2017
Pier will give a talk at Probgen ‘17 (Aarhus) and ASHG ‘17 (Orlando).
Oct 1, 2017
Juba Nait-Saada (MSc by Research) joined the group.