- Wednesday, October 22, 2025: Adam Siepel, PhD, Cold Spring Harbor Lab. Title: Phylogenetics revisited: cell lineages, cancer metastasis, and variational inference. Host: John Novembre
- Wednesday, October 29, 2025: Sriram Sankararaman, PhD, UCLA. Title: Biobank-scale methods to understand the evolutionary and genetic architecture of human complex traits. Host: Francesca Luca
- Wednesday, November 19, 2025: Jeramiah Smith, PhD, University of Kentucky. Title: Evolution and Function of Programmed DNA loss in lamprey and hagfish. Host: Francois Spitz
- Wednesday, December 10, 2025: Jacob Kitzman, PhD, University of Michigan. Title: Saturation variant-to-function maps across DNA repair pathways. Host: Isabella Salamone
- Wednesday, January 14, 2026: Julia Zeitlinger, PhD, Stowers Institute. Title: Deep-learning derived sequence rules for nucleosomes and their role in gene regulation. Host: Xin He
- Wednesday, January 21, 2026: Jeremy Berg, PhD, University of Chicago. Title: Dynamics of Complex Traits: Selection, Stratification, and Inference. Host: Carole Ober
- Wednesday, March 25, 2026: Nicholas Banovich, PhD, Translational Genomics Research Institute. Title: Disease insights from high resolution spatial transcriptomics. Host: Carole Ober
- Wednesday, April 15, 2026: Omer Gokcumen, PhD, University at Buffalo. Title: Human Amylase from the Andes to the Lab Bench: Insights into Structurally Complex Regions in the Genome. Host: Maanasa Raghavan
- Wednesday, May 20, 2026: Guy Sella, PhD, Columbia University. Title: Coming Soon. Host: Sherif Negm
- Wednesday, June 10, 2026: Yin Shen, PhD, University of California, San Francisco. Title: Characterizing cis-regulatory elements and genetic variants underlying human brain development and disease. Host: Zhuzhu Zhang
Please contact Brianna Brianna Considine at bconsidine@uchicago.edu for additional information
- Wednesday, November 12, 2025: Renee Fonseca (Andy Dahl Lab) Title: "Incorporating context-specific effects improves polygenic scores"
- Wednesday, December 3, 2025 (Note Time: 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm): Cecily Choy (Luis Barreiro Lab) Title: "Genetic determinants of T cell response variation in Indigenous South American populations" & Toño Urban (Maanasa Raghavan Lab) Title: "Admixture histories at the South and East Asian crossroads and their consequences for the spread of Sino-Tibetan languages and agriculture"
- Wednesday, January 28, 2026: Maria Meneses (Carole Ober Lab) Title: "Condition-specific eQTLs in upper airway cells during viral associated colds" & Kellen Riall (Jeremy Beg Lab) Title: "Understanding the forces shaping complex disease evolution"
- Wednesday, February 11, 2026: Sherif Negm (John Novembre Lab) Title: "Heavy-tailed dispersal and its impact on local adaptation" & Ziang Zhang (Matthew Stephens Lab) Title: "Empirical Bayes Shrinkage of Functional Effects, with Application to Analysis of Dynamic eQTLs"
- Wednesday, February 18, 2026: Fabian Halblander (O’Malley Lab) Title: "Dissecting the regulatory architecture of the Arabidopsis thaliana Abscisic Acid response" & Festus Nyasimi (Haky Im Lab) Title: "A Framework for Translating Polygenic Findings Related to Alcohol Use Disorder Across Species"
- Wednesday, February 25, 2026: Alexis Thornburg (Marcelo Nobrega Lab) Title: "Uncoupling the genetics driving adiposity and cardiometabolic disease"& Kaining Hu (Xiaochang Zhang Lab) Title: "Alternative splicing-triggered mRNA decay informs splice-switching targets for neurodevelopmental disorders"
- Wednesday, March 11, 2026: Zicheng Wang (Xin He Lab) Title: “Understanding transcriptional and epigenomic responses of neuron activation: epigenetic priming and regulatory networks” & Henry Raeder (Haky Im Lab) Title: "Mapping Drug Response Across Human Cell Types Using Heterogeneous Differentiating Cultures"
- Wednesday, March 25, 2026 (Note Time: 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm): Marida Ianni-Ravn (John Novembre Lab) Title: "A glitch in the (covariance) matrix: explaining odd patterns of phenotypic covariance in the UK Biobank" & Shreya Nirmalan (Francesca Luca Lab) Title: Marida Ianni-Ravn (John Novembre Lab) Title: “A glitch in the (covariance) matrix: explaining odd patterns of phenotypic covariance in the UK Biobank”
- Wednesday, April 8, 2026: Daniel Araujo (Luis Barreiro Lab) Title: "Mapping genetic effects on gene expression" & Ethan Zhong (Xin He Lab) Title: "Shared and distinct risk factors underlie the genetic architecture of asthma and allergic diseases"
- Wednesday, April 22, 2026: Claire Gray (Francois Spitz Lab) Title: "Managing enhancer–promoter interactions at very long distances: insights from the axolotl genome" & Jelena Bogdanovic (Alex Ruthenburg Lab) Title: Genomic atlas of transcriptional condensates
- Wednesday, April 29, 2026: Quinn Hauck (Yang Li Lab) Title: "Large-scale transcriptomic analysis in TCGA reveals a novel pan-cancer RNA-splicing program" & Anna Cormack (Yoav Gilad Lab) Title: "Comparative Analysis of Human and Chimpanzee Liver Cell Responses to Innate Immune Stimulation"
- Wednesday, May 27, 2026: Ayelen Lizarraga (Sebastian Pott Lab) Title: "Discovery of regulatory states using long-read sequencing" & Duhman Muhtaseb (Jubao Duan Lab) Title: "The observed effects of SP4’s schizophrenia-associated, ultra-rare protein-truncating variants (UR-PTVs) in hiPSC-derived excitatory neurons"
- Wednesday, June 3, 2026 (Note Time: 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm): Joe Thornton Lab Title: Coming Soon & Zhuzhu Zhang Lab Title: Coming Soon
Please contact Sue Levison at slevison@bsd.uchicago.edu for additional information
- February 4, 2026: Student Discussion Leader: Haoye Yang & Faculty Discussion Leader: Mengjie Chen. Paper: G-quadruplexes are promoter elements controlling nucleosome exclusion and RNA polymerase II pausing
- March 4, 2026: Student Discussion Leader: Elisa Chen & Faculty Discussion Leader: Andy Dahl. Paper: A scalable and robust variance components method reveals insights into the architecture of gene-environment interactions underlying complex traits
- April 1, 2026: Student Discussion Leader: Anne-Farah Usman & Faculty Discussion Leader: Sebastian Pott. Paper: Interplay between cohesin and RNA polymerase II in regulating chromatin interactions and gene transcription
- May 6, 2026: Student Discussion Leader: Brooke Bowman & Discussion Leader: Jeremy Berg. Paper: Effects of ancestry, agriculture, and lactase persistence on the stature of prehistoric Europeans
Please contact Sue Levison at slevison@bsd.uchicago.edu for additional information
HUMAN GENETICS THESIS DEFENSE EVENTS
Monday, April 6, 2026: 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm. CLSC 101. Erik McIntire (Yoav Gilad Lab) Title: “Genetic Determinants of Cell-Type-Specific Responses to Cardiotoxic Chemotherapeutics”
Monday, February 2, 2026: 10:00 am – 11:00 am. GCIS W301/303. Shreya Ramachandran (Maanasa Raghavan Lab) Title: “Human Microbiomes Across Space, Time, and Culture: Case Studies from Contemporary South Asia and Ancient Chile”