People

Christian Huber - Principal Investigator 

I'm an Assistant Professor in the Biology department of The Pennsylvania State University. I'm interested in quantifying positive and negative natural selection in the genome. Currently I'm working on methods for inferring demographic history and genetic adaptation from ancient DNA.

Please find my publications on my Google Scholar page.

Matthew Williams - Postdoctoral Scholar 

Matthew completed his undergraduate studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, where he received a degree in ancient Near Eastern history and languages. Following this, he pursued a masters degree in archaeological science at the Australian National University, Canberra.

Matthew completed his PhD in archaeogenomics at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, University of Adelaide, where he studied the genetic history of ancient Near Eastern Bronze and Iron Age populations. Currently, Matthew is a postdoctoral researcher in the Huber lab at Penn State, where his research is focused on expanding our understanding of the genetic history of ancient Near Eastern populations and the development of methods for inferring the history of admixture and selection.

Olivia Johnson - Postdoctoral Scholar 

Olivia completed her PhD at the University of Adelaide under the supervision of Dr. Huber.  Following her PhD, Olivia will continue in the Huber Lab as a Postdoctoral Scholar. She completed her B.S. with Honors in 2019 where she studied signals of positive selection in the transition from foraging to farming in ancient Europe. Her interests continue to lie in population genetics and natural selection, with her current research exploring fluctuating selection and its effects on genetic variation. 

Troy LaPolice - PhD Student

Troy is a PhD student in the Bioinformatics and Genomics Program. He completed his B.S. with Interdisciplinary Honors at the University of New Hampshire in 2021, where he studied biases in transcriptome and genome assembly. At Penn State, he is currently working on agent-based simulations of admixture events in ancient human history. He aims to uncover demographic parameters responsible for the extensive ancestry turnover associated with the transition to farming. Troy is also applying agent-based models to other interesting systems such as coral introgression and restoration. In his spare time, he enjoys attending many of the sporting events at Penn State.

Dina Memar Moshrefi - PhD Student

Dina is a PhD student in the Biology program. She graduated with a B.A. in Archaeology from the University of Tehran/Iran in 2021. During that time, she took part in multiple archaeological excavations in ancient cemeteries, where she worked as a physical anthropologist with an interest in paleopathology. At Penn State her work revolves around the study of modern-human adaptation and selection. She is interested in studying the role of environment in modern-human adaptation and higher cognitive evolution over the last 10,000 years using ancient DNA and a variety of statistical tools such as Bayesian models.

Abigail Sequeira - PhD Student

Abigail is a PhD student in the Biology program. She graduated with a B.S. in biology from the University of Dallas in 2019 and later received her MS in May 2022 from Texas A&M University where she studied selfish mitochondrial dynamics in C. elegans. She is broadly interested in human evolutionary genetics and is focusing on how demographic changes influence signals of selection in the human genome. Currently, she is investigating how admixture impacts the detection of the selective sweeps in ancient human populations.

Kevin Mouck

Kevin is a former undergraduate trainee in the Huber Lab. While at Penn State, Kevin studied Biostatics and earned an Erickson Discovery Grant for undergraduate research. Kevin graduated from Penn State in the Spring of 2024.