Archive News and Activities 2018-2021

Dec, 2021: Our paper on modeling the population history of the Tibetan Plateau is now featured on UC Davis News! Thanks so much to Kathleen Holder from the UCD News & Media for writing up this story! It feels wonderful to be featured in media by my alma mater

Dec, 2021: Our review article entitled Denisovans and Homo sapiens on the Tibetan Plateau: dispersals and adaptations, which I am co-first author on, is now online at Trends in Ecology and Evolution!

Nov, 2021: I had a poster presentation on my MaLAdapt work at the Wellcome Sanger Institute conference Human Evolution - from fossils to ancient and modern genomes.

Jul, 2021: I am BEYONG EXCITED to share the news that I received a NIH (NIGMS) K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award!! For the K99 phase, I will be working closely with Kirk Lohmueller and Sriram Sankararaman at UCLA, stay tuned about our upcoming work on dominance inference leveraging archaic introgressed ancestry! Truly grateful for all the people that supported me along this way. Thank you all so much! 

May, 2021: The Denisovan-EPAS1 paper is finally officially out! It's available for Open Access at PNAS. Citations and comments welcome!

Apr, 2021: I had a poster presenting at the CSHL Probabilistic Modeling in Genomics 2021 virtual meeting on my recent work on the development of a novel machine learning method for detecting adaptive introgression.

Apr, 2021: The AAPA 2021 invited podium symposium entitled "Ethics and Best Practices for studying contemporary human populations", co-organized and chaired by me and Mayowa Odeboyega from UC Davis, will have a zoom live session at 11am PST on April 9th. If you are registered for AAPA this year, please join us to discuss this important topic!

Apr, 2021: My paper on the adaptive introgression history of the Denisovan EPAS1 allele in Tibetans is accepted for press at PNAS! This is one of the biggest projects I completed during my postdoc training, and I'm beyond thrilled that it is officially out. Will update the article link once it's published. 

Jan, 2021: Starting from this month, I will be a fellow for the QCB Collaboratory at UCLA. I will be teaching workshops on GATK variant calling and population genetics over the next two quarters. More details available soon.

Nov, 2020: The AAPA monthly webinar on Computational Genomics in Anthropology was a great success! Thanks for all the speakers and audience for joining us from all over the world. The recordings of past webinars can be found here.

Oct, 2020: My preprint entitled "The history and evolution of the Denisovan-EPAS1 haplotype in Tibetans" is finally on bioRxiv! Extremely excited to see this work out after a two-year journey.

Sep, 2020: Right before the Thanksgiving break on November 23rd at 9am PST, I'll be chairing an AAPA monthly webinar on "The Ups, Downs, Ins, and Outs of Computational Genomics in Anthropology". It will be free to watch and please register soon on the AAPA website!

Aug, 2020: very proud of my mentee Nina Sachdev from Wellesley College to successfully complete the UCLA Bruines-in-Genomics (BIG) summer program and for winning the Research Excellence Award! 

May, 2020: My manuscript on "The impact of recessive deleterious variants on the detection of adaptive introgression in human populations" got accepted at Genetics! Here's the link for the full article: https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.120.303081

May, 2020: I gave a poster presentation (online Q&A session) at the virtualized TAGC/PEQG conference on my most recent work of "Recessive deleterious variants have a limited impact on the detection of adaptive introgression in human populations"

Apr, 2020: I hosted the virtual symposium entitled "Thriving at miles high - studying high altitude adaptation across the globe", which was originally an invited podium symposium for the 89th AAPA annual meeting (in-person meeting canceled due to COVID-19). The Zoom session and Facebook Live-streaming of the symposium were extremely successful, with ~100 audience watching online throughout the session! Thanks so much again for those who contributed to the symposium and supported us!

Mar 2020: I gave a webinar talk for the Chinese Genomics Meet-up Online (Title: Upon the encounter between archaic and modern humans: why deleterious mutations matter)

Dec 2019: I gave a seminar talk at BGI Research Institute in Shenzhen, China (Title: Statistical methods to detect archaic adaptive introgression)

Dec 2019: I gave a podium talk at the International Symposium on Paleoanthropology in Commemoration of the 90th Anniversary of the Discovery of the First Skull of Peking Man held in Beijing, China (Title: Denisovan Introgression and the Evolutionary History of EPAS1 gene in Tibetans)

Aug 2019: ​I gave a seminar talk at the School of Archaeology at University of Oxford, UK (Title: Genetic Legacies from archaic humans)

July 2019: I gave an oral presentation in an Open Symposium session at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) in Manchester, UK. (Title: MLAdapt - a machine learning-based method for detecting genome-wide adaptive introgression)

June 2019: I received 2nd place in Best Short Talk Award at the Inaugural Los Angeles Postdoc Research Symposium held at UCLA CNSI. (Talk title: Genetic Legacy from archaic humans: a tale of Denisovans, Tibetans, and EPAS1 gene)

March 2019: I gave a podium talk at the 88th AAPA meeting in Cleveland, OH. (Session 20: Genotype-Phenotype Studies; Title: Archaic Introgression Largely Affected High Altitude Adaptation and the Evolutionary History of EPAS1 in Tibet)
Media Coverage

Oct 2018: I had a poster presentation at the ASHG annual meeting in San Diego, CA.