Guy Sella
Guy received a BSc in Physics and Mathematics from Tel Aviv University, a MSc in Neural Computation from the Hebrew University (with Itamar Pitowsky and Eva Jablonka), and a PhD in Mathematics from Tel Aviv University (with Ilan Eshel and Marc Feldman [Stanford University]). Before joining Columbia University, he was a faculty member at the Hebrew University and a visiting Professor at Stanford University and the University of Chicago.
Jiarun Chen
Graduate Student
Jiarun received his BSc in Biology and Mathematics from Tsinghua University and joined the PhD program in Biological Sciences at Columbia in 2020. He now uses modeling to study polygenic adaptation when selection pressures change repeatedly over time.
William Milligan
Postdoctoral Student
Will received his BSc in Biology and Applied Mathematics from Emory University and his PhD in Biological Sciences at Columbia (Sella lab). During his PhD, he worked on several topic, including modeling the impact of essential workers on epidemic control during the Covid pandemic and modeling genetic variation in mutation rates to study mutation rate variation among and within human populations. He is currently a postdoc in the lab to complete theoretical work begun during his PhD, aimed at understanding when evolutionary adaptation arises from polygenic vs few large-effect changes.
Alumni
Guy Amster
Former Graduate Student
Guy received a BSc in Statistics and Mathematics and an MSc in Mathematics from the Hebrew University, and worked in industry before joining the lab. During his PhD, Guy studied diverse topics, including modeling life-history effects on patterns of genetic diversity within and between species, e.g., to explain differences between X and autosomes and the molecular clock in apes. He is now director of machine learning engineering at Flatiron Health.
Etam Benger
Former MSc Student
Etam received his BSc and MSc in Mathematics from the Hebrew University. During his MSc, he developed a mathematical model that described the effects of changing selective pressures on substitution patterns. Etam now works as head of research at Taykey (Israel).
Jeremy Berg
Former Postdoctoral Student
Jeremy received his BSc in Biology from the University of Wisconsin. He was a graduate student in Graham Coop’s lab at UC Davis, where he worked on methods to detect polygenic selection in humans and on modeling selective sweeps from standing genetic variation. For his postdoc, Jeremy investigated population genetic models of complex diseases. He is now an assistant professor at the University of Chicago.
Luba Broitman
Former MSc Student, jointly supervised by Ran Nathan
Luba received her BSc in Physics and MSc in Ecology and Evolution at the Hebrew University (Israel). During her MSc, she used mathematical models and computer simulations to study how characteristics of the environment affect animal movement.
Eyal Elyashiv
Former MSc and PhD Student
Eyal received a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science from Tel Aviv University before joining the Sella lab for his MSc and PhD in Ecology and Evolution at the Hebrew University. His masters work focused on characterizing genome-wide shifts in the efficacy of purifying selection between populations and species of yeasts. For his doctoral research, he developed and applied methods of inferring how selection affects patterns of neutral genetic diversity. Eyal is now a research scientist at Ancestry.com.
Arbel Harpak
Former MSc Student
Arbel received his BSc in Physics and Mathematics at the Hebrew University before joining the Sella lab for an MSc in Ecology and Evolution. For his masters, he developed models for genetic diversity levels in evolutionary experiments with bacteria. He then completed his PhD with Jonathan Pritchard at Stanford University and a postdoc with Molly Przeworski at Columbia, and is now an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Laura Hayward
Graduate Student
Laura received her B.Sc. in Physics, Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from Cape Town University in 2011, her MSc in Mathematics from the University of Edinburgh in 2013, and her PhD in Mathematics at Columbia (Sella lab). During her PhD, she modeled polygenic adaptation in order to understand how this ubiquitous process works on the genetic and phenotypic levels. Laura is now a postdoc in Nick Barton’s lab at IST Austria.
Oren Kolodny
Former MSc Student
Oren received his BSc in Physics before joining the Sella lab at the Hebrew University for his MSc in Ecology and Evolution. His masters focused on methods for inferring the parameters of adaptation from patterns of genetic variation. He then completed a PhD in Biology with Arnon Lotem at Tel Aviv University and his postdoc with Marc Feldman at Stanford University, and is now an assistant professor at the Hebrew University.
David Murphy
Former Graduate Student
David received his BSc in Neuroscience from Brandeis University (2009), worked as a research assistant in the Hatten lab at Rockefeller University, and did his PhD in Biological Sciences in the Sella lab. During his PhD, David developed inference methods and applied them to genomic data in order to characterize the effects of linked selection (e.g., background selection) on diversity levels throughout the human genome. David is now a postdoc working with Patrick Gaffney at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.
Shmuel Sattath
Former Research Scientist
Shmuel received a BSc in Physics and Mathematics, an MSc in Mathematics (with Azriel Levi), and a PhD in Psychology (with Amos Tverski) from the Hebrew University. He was a cofounder of Pilat and a part-time research scientist in the Sella lab from 2007–2013. Shmuel’s studied adaptation in Drosophila species using genetic variation data. He is founder and chairman and of Mobeeart.com .
Tal Serphos
Former MSc Student
Tal received a BSc in Physics before joining the Sella lab for his MSc in Ecology and Evolution at the Hebrew University. For his dissertation, he developed tests for polygenic adaptation and applied them to data from humans. Tal is cofounder & COO of Backfeed, Ltd.
Yuval Simons
Former Graduate Student
Yuval received a BSc in Physics from the Hebrew University and an MSc in solid-state physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science (with Yosef Imry). For his PhD, Yuval worked on the effects of recent demographic history on the burden of deleterious mutations in human populations and on the population genetic processes that shape heritable variation in complex traits in humans. He completed his postdoc with Jonathan Pritchard at Stanford University and is now an assistant professor at the University of Chicago.
SELLA LAB 