Human biology and disease are outcomes of historical evolutionary processes. While genomics is producing rapid insights into genome biology and the genetic architecture of complex traits, the direct study of evolution requires temporal data that can only be accessed by ancient DNA sequencing from archaeological material.  Pontus Skoglund's lab uses ancient genomics to study evolution at key periods in the human past. A main interest is to reconstruct the genomic co-evolution of human populations and pathogens, better to reconstruct how past epidemics and pandemics have driven immunity response to infectious disease. The current focus is on the past few thousand years in Britain, by leveraging leading human genetics resources such as the UK biobank.

Pontus Skoglund, PhD, is Group Leader of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom. He was previously a postdoctoral researcher with David Reich at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA, and a graduate student with Mattias Jakobsson at Uppsala University, Sweden. He is a recipient of a Wellcome Trust Investigator award, a European Research Council starting grant, and Swedish Research Council and Wenner-Gren fellowships.