In my lab, our work is guided by the principle that answers to complex and important problems should not be confined by rigid disciplinary boundaries. Thus, we are primarily motivated by important biological questions and use both experimental, computational, and theoretical methods in our research. Our favorite "model organisms" are yeast, dogs, and humans, each of which are uniquely poised to answer specific questions about the biology and evolution of genomes.
We have a longstanding interest in human population genomics, with a particular emphasis on identifying regions of the genome that have been substrates of recent adaptive evolution. Although not typically viewed as a model organism, humans have become a powerful system to study genome-wide patterns of natural selection, as considerable sequence and polymorphism data exists in geographically diverse populations. We maintain an interest in developing and applying novel statistical and computational approaches for detecting selection, and have more recently been using new large-scale datasets to address questions about selection, demographic history, and archaic introgression.
