Modeling Human Dispersal and Population Density over Space (2018).

Here, we developed a model for inferring population demography across space. Our model uses population genetic theory to relate the observed genetic data to the underlying demographic parameters. We apply our method to humans populations in Europe. Based on this work, I was selected as a Semifinalist for the Charles J. Epstein Award for Excellence in Human Genetics Research.

Link to paper here.

Inference and visualization of ancient DNA damage (2018).

Here, we very much motivated by our first hand experience in working with ancient DNA data. When working with ancient DNA, a necessary first step is to assess the amount of damage in the data. We realized that many of the current approaches failed to capture all patterns of DNA damage in the data and did not provide concise and comprehensive visual summaries of the damage patterns. To attempt to remedy these problems, we developed an approach based on “grade of membership”” models (also known as “topic models”).

Link to paper here.