Overview

I am a theoretical population geneticist by training and inclination, and the work my lab does is most easily thought of as population genetics applications to human disease studies. In particular, my lab devotes most of its time and energy to building tools to analyze whole genome data sets in an attempt to discover alleles associated with the disease. Most of our work lies in the intersection of human genomics/population genetics/biostatistics and computer science. Loosely put, we take human genomics data, think about that data like a population geneticist, develop relatively straightforward biostatistical tests for that data, and then implement those tests using somewhat sophisticated computer science approaches. The motto of our lab might be "Everything is easier with a 1000 CPU computer cluster!"

Since becoming an independent faculty member my work has included pioneering demonstrations of the use and power of haplotype analysis at the whole genome level, detection and analysis of CNVs, and most recently the analysis of next generation sequencing data, with contributions to both the theory underlying the design of next generation sequencing experiments, and the tools necessary to analyze those experiments. I built the analytical and computational infrastructure to fully analyze arbitrarily large numbers of genomes per day distributed in the cloud. While much of my main efforts over the last 10 years have been on WGS / Exome / GWAS data analysis I have always maintained an interest in classical population and quantitative genetics, often applying very old ideas of heritability and effect size estimation to modern disease questions.

Academic Appointment

• Associate Professor, Department of Human Genetics, Emory University School of Medicine

Education

Research