HHMI released the official 2027 Gilliam Fellowship details, and a lot changed. Deadline's earlier this cycle: Oct 27. Int'l & MD-PhD students now eligible. Stipend up to 50K. New postdoc pathway adds up to 7 yrs of support. No Journal names!!!! www.yaelcourtney.com/resources-an...

2027 HHMI Gilliam Fellowship: New Deadline, Eligibility, and Award Changes — Ya'el Courtney

HHMI's 2027 Gilliam Fellowship guide is out. What changed: an earlier October 27 deadline, expanded eligibility, a higher stipend, and a new postdoc pathway.

yaelcourtney.com

For the #SMBE2026 crowd: Our biology department at Université Laval has a faculty position in Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, or Genetics. Québec City is a wonderful mix of culture and access to nature. Apply before September 4th. universityaffairs.ca/search-jobs/

Search Jobs - University Affairs

universityaffairs.ca

The evolution of structural variation across 500 million years of vertebrate evolution https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.26.733778v1

Besides, I'm looking for grad students to join my group! If anyone is interested in admixture related questions in popgen (humans, drosophila and beyond) and spend a few years in beautiful Ann Arbor, I'm happy to chat whenever during SMBE!

Xinjun Zhang@zhanglabpopgen.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Just in time for #SMBE2026! Here's DEEP for detecting ghost/superarchaic introgression: scalable, robust, and no ARG! We find ~0.5% genome with superarchaic ancestry in East Asians and Oceanians, plus a notable signal at HLA Come find our poster tonight (#241)! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Just in time for #SMBE2026! Here's DEEP for detecting ghost/superarchaic introgression: scalable, robust, and no ARG! We find ~0.5% genome with superarchaic ancestry in East Asians and Oceanians, plus a notable signal at HLA Come find our poster tonight (#241)! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Scalable ARG-free Detection of Denisovan-mediated Superarchaic Introgression Reveals Heterogeneous Patterns across Populations

Ghost introgression from unsampled hominin lineages has emerged as an increasingly important component of human evolutionary history. Recent studies suggest that deeply divergent hominin lineages may ...

biorxiv.org

Spent the last two years developing a new Intro to Physics course for undergrad biology majors. It features tons of examples from biology (especially Ecology & Evolution!) and requires only middle school-level math. Lecture note here shorturl.at/0PiVp Any comments or feedback are highly welcome!

My postdoc Susanna Gutierrez will represent the Zhang Lab at the #PEQG26! She will present a poster on Thursday showing that a refined map of adaptive introgression candidates in Peruvians revealed multiple waves of adaptation driven by archaic variants, including a hot story on CXCR4 🔥

I wrote about AI in academia. "PhD-level thinking", LLM bias, grunt work, alignment, AGI, data center water use, AI politics -- something for everyone.

Thoughts on AI in academia

PhD-level thinking, LLM bias, alignment, AGI, data centers, and AI politics

open.substack.com

oops this is exactly how I write my grants 🫣

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 3mo ago

11. Addendum: here are the words characteristic of LLMs. Notice anything? It reads like an email from our upper administration.

New from @gvbarroso.bsky.social in our lab: quantifying the relative importance of mutation rate variation and background selection to levels of diversity along the human genome.

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Causal inference clarifies the roles of background selection and mutation rate variation in shaping human genetic diversity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.02.727906v1

Happy to present our perspective on how to think about group-differences in genetic risk. With @nicole-kleman.bsky.social , Meng Lin, and Chris Gignoux.

Tread lightly interpreting group differences in genetic risk

Observed differences in mean phenotypic values across human groups have attracted renewed interest with the rise of large-scale genomic studies and polygenic risk prediction. However, the genetic basi...

arxiv.org

Please share! The USC Department of Quantitative and Computational Biology is searching for a full-time, teaching-track faculty member for the teaching of QBIO undergraduate statistics and computational biology courses. usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange...

We got a new lab photo! Celebrating a productive year - 3 upcoming preprints (keep an eye out!) 2 trainee grant submissions and 1 master's thesis - with axes and knives throwing. I'm very proud of my group and I'm darn lucky to have them working with me! #ProudPI

“South America—the last continet to be settled—was peopled in surprisingly complex way” by Lizzie Wade @science.org www.science.org/content/arti... (Link to the paper in the quoted skeet below)

South America—the last continent to be settled—was peopled in surprisingly complex way

Genetically diverse groups arrived in three waves, some potentially carrying genes acquired from long-ago Australasian ancestors

science.org

Eduardo Amorim@cegamorim.bsky.social · 4mo ago

The largest and most diverse collection of Indigenous American genomes 👉🏻 “The evolutionary history and unique genetic diversity of Indigenous Americans” @macscastro.bsky.social @hunemeier.bsky.social @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social @jrockdrigo.bsky.social 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Anne C. Stone, Regents Professor @arizonastateuni.bsky.social has been awarded our Lifetime Contribution Award. @acstone.bsky.social Visit our website to learn more about the SMBE Faculty Awards 🔗 smbe.org/faculty-awards #society

Our new paper is out in @nature.com! By exploring the rich genetic diversity of Indigenous peoples across America, we show how large-scale genomic data reveal far more complex evolutionary history, shaped by multiple dispersals, long-term regional continuity, and adaptation to diverse environments.

Very proud to share our new work on General, orders-of-magnitude faster whole-genome analysis with genotype representation graphs (GRG). We topped ourselves in this one 🚀 and made GRG a practical foundation for biobank-scale population and statistical genetics. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

📢 Call for submissions: The RECOMB-Genetics satellite workshop will take place in Thessaloniki, Greece 🇬🇷 on May 25, 2026, just before the RECOMB conference (May 26–29) @recombconf.bsky.social 📅 Submission deadline: April 2 (AoE) 👉 recomb.org/recomb2026/r... Submit your work and join us!

SMBE 2026 Workshop: Genomic History Inference Strategies Tournament (GHIST) kickoff 🗓️ June 28 🔗 smbe2026.org/programme #SMBE2026

Second- or third-year PhD student in biological or biomedical sciences? Get ready — applications for our #GilliamFellows Program open Sept. 1! Robust research support, incredible scientific community, & tailored professional development that can transform a PhD journey. 🧪 bit.ly/4bjdTmr

Leipzig U and the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) have an open faculty position (W2) in evolutionary population genetics! This position is tenured and comes with generous core funding. We are eager to welcome a new colleague! Deadline March 11. www.uni-leipzig.de/en/newsdetai...

The PopGen Vienna Seminar series schedule is ready for the next term (March-June). It's jam-packed with fantastic speakers in #evolution, #genetics, #genomics, #popgen, and more! Details and streaming link signup can be found on our website popgen-vienna.at/news/seminars/

Fun news! @gcbias.bsky.social and I are teaching a 2-week online population genetics workshop this summer to raise money for the Center for Population Biology at UC Davis. We're trying to gauge interest -- please fill this out if you might be interested! And please share broadly!

Davis Summer Population Genomics Program

Want to learn population genetics? Please fill out this form to indicate your potential interest in a 2-week intensive online summer population genetics course taught by Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra and Graham...

docs.google.com

Very excited about this year’s Biology of Genomes meeting, especially keynotes from @jkpritch.bsky.social and @janetk.bsky.social. A great venue to see what’s new and upcoming in genomics, writ broadly. Abstract submissions due in 1 week!

Aaron Quinlan (he/him)@aaronquinlan.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Reminder that the abstract deadline for the Biology of Genomes meeting at CSHL is on Feb 13! We have a fantastic lineup of keynote speakers (Janet Kelso and Jonathan Pritchard) and session chairs. Submit your best science to this exciting and engaged meeting! meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp...

Happy to share my work with my advisor Zachary Szpiech! Why are associations between ROH & complex traits inconsistent across studies? We use realistic simulations to show how demographic history and genetic architecture interact to shape the phenotypic impact of ROH. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The Influence of Demographic History and Genetic Architecture on Complex Traits via Runs of Homozygosity

Runs of homozygosity (ROH) are contiguous genomic regions where all sites are homozygous, inherited from identical haplotypes due to shared ancestry. The number and length of ROH in individuals varies...

biorxiv.org

The registration deadline is fast approaching for probgen 2026! Abstracts due by January 15, registration by January 31 probgen2026.github.io

Grateful to share our paper on gene-specific selective sweeps in human gut microbiomes, now out in Nature! It has been a joy to work with @rwolff.bsky.social, whose insights and hard work made this possible. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Gene-specific selective sweeps are pervasive across human gut microbiomes - Nature

Development and application of the integrated linkage disequilibrium score (iLDS) reveals both selective pressures impacting the human gut microbiome and the mechanisms by which gut bacteria adapt to ...

nature.com

Well well. The standard model for how frequencies of recessive disease genes are established doesn't work. And that seems to be because recessive variants are visible to selection due to pleiotropy. (But still we teach Mendelian genetics...) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Allele Frequencies at Recessive Disease Genes are Mainly Determined by Pleiotropic Effects in Heterozygotes

The classic theory of mutation-selection balance predicts the equilibrium frequency of genetic variation under negative selection. The model predicts a simple relationship between the total frequency ...

biorxiv.org

Preprint online right before the holidays! Excited to share the first piece of work from the Zhang Lab, led by my absolutely stellar postdoc Michelle Kim! In this work, we ask how admixture, selection and demography shape complex trait genetics and GWAS performance www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Determining the driving factors shaping genetic architecture of complex traits in recently admixed populations

Understanding the genetic architecture of complex traits in admixed populations remains challenging due to heterogeneous genetic backgrounds and demographic histories. Mischaracterizing admixture can ...

biorxiv.org

Work from my amazing undergrad @leyan-wang.bsky.social is just preprinted! TL;DR: If you worry that ARG methods might fail on unphased data due to phasing errors, you may not need to. Check it out & consider reposting to support a great young scientist!

Leyan Wang@leyan-wang.bsky.social · 9mo ago

We are excited to share our recent work on the surprising robustness of Ancestral Recombination Graph (ARG) inference tools to computational phasing errors, now available on BioRxiv: biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... This work is co-advised by @yundeng.bsky.social and Rasmus Nielsen. 1/7