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Simon Gravel

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Simon Gravel

Assistant Professor, Department of Human Genetics

Email: simon.gravel@mcgill.ca
Phone: (514) 398-0753

740 Dr Penfield Ave, Room 7206
Montréal, Québec, Canada, H3A 0G1

Website

Simon Gravel obtained his BSc and MSc in Mathematics and Physics from the Université de Montréal and his PhD in Physics from Cornell University in 2009. His research in Genetics began during a short postdoc in the Physics department at the Universität zu Köln and the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, and continued in the Genetics department at Stanford University. He joined the Department of Human Genetics at McGill and the Genome Quebec Innovation Centre in 2013.

Dr Gravel’s is interested in learning about biology and evolution through creative analysis of high-throughput biological data. His group develops mathematical and statistical methods that take advantage of diverse data sources to refine our understanding of fundamental parameters of human history and biology. His recent research has focused on how the history of diverse human populations affected patterns of genetic diversity and disease. His group made contributions about the origins of modern humans, the successive waves of migrations that led to the formations of contemporary populations in the Americas, as well as the identification of genetic predispositions for disease.

This research is largely data-driven, and it combines modeling at multiple levels: we first wish to understand the fundamental biology underpinning evolution, such as the processes of mutation, recombination, and selection. To understand human genomes, we also need to understand how recent and ancient human history affected patterns of genetic diversity: ancient population expansions, recent migrations, and marriage patterns all impact genomic diversity, and in many cases we can reconstruct these events through careful modelling. Finally, we need to understand the behavior of cutting edge technology involved in the latest datasets. Dr Gravel’s group has projects focusing on anthropology and history, technology development, biology, and medicine, and is always happy to explore new opportunities involving new technologies and creative mathematical modeling.

Recent Publications

  • Ragsdale, AP, Weaver, TD, Atkinson, EG, Hoal, EG, Möller, M, Henn, BM et al.. Publisher Correction: A weakly structured stem for human origins in Africa. Nature. 2023;620 (7972):E11. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06433-6. PubMed PMID:37460744 PubMed Central PMC10512153.
  • Anderson-Trocmé, L, Nelson, D, Zabad, S, Diaz-Papkovich, A, Kryukov, I, Baya, N et al.. On the genes, genealogies, and geographies of Quebec. Science. 2023;380 (6647):849-855. doi: 10.1126/science.add5300. PubMed PMID:37228217 .
  • Ragsdale, AP, Weaver, TD, Atkinson, EG, Hoal, EG, Möller, M, Henn, BM et al.. A weakly structured stem for human origins in Africa. Nature. 2023;617 (7962):755-763. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06055-y. PubMed PMID:37198480 PubMed Central PMC10208968.
  • Zabad, S, Gravel, S, Li, Y. Fast and accurate Bayesian polygenic risk modeling with variational inference. Am J Hum Genet. 2023;110 (5):741-761. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2023.03.009. PubMed PMID:37030289 PubMed Central PMC10183379.
  • Mishra, A, Malik, R, Hachiya, T, Jürgenson, T, Namba, S, Posner, DC et al.. Publisher Correction: Stroke genetics informs drug discovery and risk prediction across ancestries. Nature. 2022;612 (7938):E7. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05492-5. PubMed PMID:36376532 PubMed Central PMC9712088.
  • Mishra, A, Malik, R, Hachiya, T, Jürgenson, T, Namba, S, Posner, DC et al.. Stroke genetics informs drug discovery and risk prediction across ancestries. Nature. 2022;611 (7934):115-123. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05165-3. PubMed PMID:36180795 PubMed Central PMC9524349.
  • Alenezi, WM, Milano, L, Fierheller, CT, Serruya, C, Revil, T, Oros, KK et al.. The Genetic and Molecular Analyses of RAD51C and RAD51D Identifies Rare Variants Implicated in Hereditary Ovarian Cancer from a Genetically Unique Population. Cancers (Basel). 2022;14 (9):. doi: 10.3390/cancers14092251. PubMed PMID:35565380 PubMed Central PMC9104874.
  • Moldoveanu, D, Ramsay, L, Lajoie, M, Anderson-Trocme, L, Lingrand, M, Berry, D et al.. Spatially mapping the immune landscape of melanoma using imaging mass cytometry. Sci Immunol. 2022;7 (70):eabi5072. doi: 10.1126/sciimmunol.abi5072. PubMed PMID:35363543 .
  • Baumdicker, F, Bisschop, G, Goldstein, D, Gower, G, Ragsdale, AP, Tsambos, G et al.. Efficient ancestry and mutation simulation with msprime 1.0. Genetics. 2022;220 (3):. doi: 10.1093/genetics/iyab229. PubMed PMID:34897427 PubMed Central PMC9176297.
  • Zabad, S, Ragsdale, AP, Sun, R, Li, Y, Gravel, S. Assumptions about frequency-dependent architectures of complex traits bias measures of functional enrichment. Genet Epidemiol. 2021;45 (6):621-632. doi: 10.1002/gepi.22388. PubMed PMID:34157784 .
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