Genetics and Epidemiology Seminar

This is a seminar series with talks on a mix of topics in epidemiology and statistical and population genetics. Everyone is very welcome and please come along if interested! If you would like to receive emails/reminders about upcoming talks please subscribe to the mailing list by emailing genetics-epidemiology-seminar-subscribe [at] maillist.ox.ac.uk (with any subject/body).

Academic Year 2026/27

Michaelmas Term

• Susan Johnston (Edinburgh)
  “TBC” 📅 12/11/2026  |  📍 TBC
• Hannes Svardal (Antwerp)
  “TBC” 📅 29/10/2026  |  📍 TBC
• David López Carbonell (Zaragoza)
  “TBC” 📅 TBC  |  📍 TBC

Academic Year 2025/26

Trinity Term

• Iker Rivas-Gonzalez (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)
  “Novel insights into hybridization and reproductive isolation from coalescent trees in wild baboons” 📅 11/06/2026  |  📍 Department of Statistics, Seminar Room 1
• Evan Irving-Pease (Oxford Big Data Institute)
  “What can ancient DNA tell us about the evolution of disease susceptibility?” 📅 29/05/2026  |  📍 Department of Statistics, Small Lecture Theatre
• Kasper Munch (Aarhus)
  “Scalable exact (population genetics) inference with phase-type distributions” 📅 27/05/2026  |  📍 Department of Statistics, Small Lecture Theatre
• Daiki Tagami (Oxford)
  “A population genetic simulation of UK Biobank” 📅 30/04/2026  |  📍 Department of Statistics, Small Lecture Theatre

Hilary Term

• Konrad Lohse (Edinburgh)
  “The population genomics of species barriers and introgression” 📅 12/03/2025  |  📍 Department of Statistics, Small Lecture Theatre
• Garrett Hellenthal (UCL)
  “Exploring links between DNA methylation and the early embryo in humans” 📅 19/02/2026  |  📍 Department of Statistics, Small Lecture Theatre
• Bianca De Sanctis (Cambridge)
  “Ancient metagenomics reveals subglacial microbiomes driven by oxygen availability” 📅 05/02/2026  |  📍 Department of Statistics, Small Lecture Theatre
• Yan Wong (Oxford Big Data Institute)
  “Population-free analysis of allele ages: an application to ultra-rare deleterious mutations in humans” 📅 23/01/2026  |  📍 Department of Statistics, Small Lecture Theatre

Michaelmas Term

• David Redding (Natural History Museum)
  “TBC” 📅 04/12/2025  |  📍 Department of Statistics, Small Lecture Theatre
• James Kitchens (UC Davis)
  “Reconstructing the spatial histories of populations from gene trees” 📅 18/11/2025  |  📍 Department of Statistics, Seminar Room 1
• Priya Moorjani (UC Berkeley)
  “Mapping Our Past: Insights from Ancient and Modern Genomics” 📅 11/11/2025  |  📍 Department of Statistics, Small Lecture Theatre
• Lachie Scarsbrook (Oxford)
  “The 20,000 Year Coevolutionary History of Humans and Dogs” 📅 06/11/2025  |  📍 Department of Statistics, Small Lecture Theatre
• Ruairidh MacLeod (Oxford)
  “Lethal plague outbreaks in middle Holocene hunter–gatherers at lake Baikal” 📅 16/10/2025  |  📍 Department of Statistics, Small Lecture Theatre

Academic Year 2024/25

Trinity Term

• Leo Speidel (RIKEN)
  “Powerful inference of admixture using joint genealogies of ancient and modern humans” 📅 26/06/2025  |  📍 Somerville College, Park 5
• Annie Forster (Oxford)
  “Host-pathogen co-evolution at sickle-associated loci in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum” 📅 19/06/2025  |  📍 Somerville College, New Powell Room
• Nancy Bird (UCL)
  “Dating historical admixture in modern and ancient samples” 📅 12/06/2025  |  📍 Somerville College, New Powell Room
• Simon Cauchemez (Institut Pasteur)
  “Analysing household studies to decipher the drivers of infectious disease transmission, susceptibility and infectivity” 📅 22/05/2025  |  📍 Somerville College, New Powell Room
• Will Barrie (Cambridge)
  “Using ancient DNA to trace the evolution of immunity and autoimmunity” 📅 15/05/2025  |  📍 Somerville College, New Powell Room

Hilary Term

• Hugo Aschard (Institut Pasteur)
  “Collinearity in genetic association studies, from multivariate analysis to GxE interaction” 📅 13/03/2025  |  📍 Somerville College, New Powell Room
• Luca Ferretti (Oxford Pandemic Sciences Institute and Big Data Institute)
  “Digital contact tracing and precision epidemiology” 📅 27/02/2025  |  📍 Somerville College, New Powell Room
• Paul Jenkins (Warwick)
  “Some unusual properties of estimators for evolutionary parameters from diffusion trajectories” 📅 13/02/2025  |  📍 Somerville College, New Powell Room
• Trevor Cousins (Cambridge)
  “Evidence for deep ancestral admixture in human evolutionary history using the sequentially Markovian coalescent” 📅 30/01/2025  |  📍 Somerville College, New Powell Room