Our group belongs to the UCL Genetics Institute, at the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment of University College London. We also belong to the UCL Centre for Computational Biology and the Human Evolution @UCL Network, and are very active members of the London Centre for Ecology and Evolution.

 

Our goal is to understand how organisms adapt to their natural environments, and how these evolutionary changes shape phenotypes. We are most interested in adaptive evolution, and study the role that natural selection has played in the phenotypically-relevant genomic diversity that exists within and between populations.

 

While not necessarily limited by organism, we have typically studied humans, intrigued by our recent evolution, and other primates, motivated by an urgency to understand their past evolution and current adaptive potential. We are now working with Drosophila too, which allows us to answer questions that are difficult to address in large mammals. In all species, we analyse modern and ancient genomes using a combination of genomics, bioinformatics, population genetics and functional approaches.

 

We a diverse and welcoming team with multiple members from different corners of the world and society. We believe in research that is driven by curiosity and passion, we foster interactions and collaboration at all levels (among group members and with international collaborators) and we care deeply about inclusion (Aida is the head of the department’s EDI team).

 

Read about our research, people in the group, our publications and how to contact us.