Statistics Department Seminar Series: Peter Ralph, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Oregon

Abstract: Computer simulations of evolving populations are a crucial tool for exploration, inference, and validation with population genomic data. However, due to the size of the genome, simulation of large, sexual populations - especially across geography - has been a major challenge. I will discuss how efforts to make these simulations feasible has led to development of a new data structure, the succinct tree sequence, that stores genetic variation data orders of magnitude more efficiently as usual methods, while at the same time encoding the entire genealogical history of every genome and making computation with these genomes orders of magnitude more efficient. I will also discuss some applications


Peter Ralph is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon. He completed his Ph.D. in Statistics at UC Berkeley, advised by Steve Evans.

https://math.uoregon.edu/profile/plr