People
Pizza & beer at Homeslice (Nov. 2021). Front to back, left: Carrie, Joyce and Matt; right: Arbel, Amber and Rebecca.
At Bufalina Due (March 2023). Front to back, left: Jared, Matt and Joyce; right: Arbel, Dinesh and Sam.
Lab and friends at The Vortex (April 2023). Front to back, left: Sam, Olivia, Arbel, Jed, Jared; right: Matt, Joyce, Mark, Camille, Diego.
Arbel Harpak | Principal Investigator
Arbel is an Assistant Professor affiliated with both the Division of Health Informatics and Data Science in the Department of Population Health at the Dell Medical School and the Department of Integrative Biology at the College of Natural Sciences. Previously, Arbel was a Simons Foundation Fellow in Molly Przeworski’s lab at Columbia University. He holds a B.S. in both mathematics and physics and an M.S. in ecology, evolution and behavior from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, advised by Guy Sella. He also holds an M.S. in statistics and a Ph.D. in biology from Stanford University, where he was advised by Jonathan Pritchard as a Stanford Center for Computational, Evolutionary and Human Genomics Fellow.
Carrie Zhu | Research Scientist
Carrie completed her Bachelor's degree at UT Austin studying Management Information Systems and pursuing the Elements of Computing Certificate and Pre-Medical track. She is interested in genomic research and its clinical applications. She is currently pursuing an MD degree, and hopes to combine clinical work with research. Outside of research, she enjoys playing volleyball and tutoring children.
Eric Weine | Research Scientist
Eric received his Bachelor's and Master's, both in Statistics, at the University of Chicago in 2019. Before joining the lab, he was a Quantitative Analyst at the Los Angeles Dodgers. Broadly, he's interested in applying statistics and machine learning to large genomic datasets. Outside of research, Eric enjoys rock climbing, watching baseball, and listening to live jazz.
Joyce Wang | PhD Student
Joyce received her B.S. in Biology from UT Austin and is currently a graduate student in the Cell and Molecular Biology program. She is broadly interested in computational biology. Joyce is jointly advised by Arbel and Vagheesh Narasimhan, and is interested in understanding the relationship between genetic ancestry and the portability of polygenic scores. Outside the lab, Joyce enjoys baking and photography.
Samuel Smith | Postdoctoral Researcher
Sam earned a Ph.D. in computational biology from Brown University where he worked with Sohini Ramachandran on developing new frameworks for analyzing genetic data from multiple populations at multiple genomic scales. He earned a B.A. in Evolutionary Biology from Vanderbilt University while working with Antonis Rokas on the genetic determinants of reproductive life history traits in the domestic dog. Sam is interested in developing new methods to interrogate open questions in population and quantitative genetics.
Matthew Ming | PhD Student
Matt is a graduate student in the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior program joint between the Harpak Lab and the Kirkpatrick Lab. He received his B.A. in Biology at Cornell University. He is broadly interested in population genetics, evolution, and computational biology. Outside the lab, Matt enjoys rock climbing, playing board games, and watching movies.
Xinyi Miao | Visiting Undergraduate Student
Xinyi is an undergraduate at University of Science and Technology of China pursuing Bachelor’s degree in Statistics. Xinyi is interested in population genetics and GWAS. Outside of research, Xinyi enjoys calligraphy and debate.
movies.
Jared Cole | PhD Student
Jared is a graduate student in the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior program in both the Harpak and Kirkpatrick Labs. He received a B.S. in Biology from the University of Arkansas and a M.S. from Mississippi State University. He is interested in evolution and population genetics, especially the study of genome evolution, sexual antagonism, and sex chromosomes. His current research focuses on sex-specific selection in humans. Outside the lab, he enjoys movies, reading, and the Austin live music scene.
Jedidiah Carlson | Research Associate
Jed earned a PhD in bioinformatics from the University of Michigan in 2018 and completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Washington Department of Genome Sciences, followed by industry R&D positions at Helix and TwinStrand Biosciences. He is interested in human evolutionary/population genetics, bioinformatics for large-scale sequencing data, and metaresearch on the social impacts of science.
Alumni
Liaoyi Xu | PhD Rotation Student
Liaoyi is a graduate student in the Cell and Molecular Biology program who completed a rotation project in the lab. Before starting at UT Austin, he received his Master's degree in Animal Science at Zhejiang University. He is broadly interested in bioinformatics and computational biology. Outside the lab, Liaoyi enjoys playing table tennis and badminton.
Olivia Smith | PhD Rotation Student
Olivia is a graduate student in the Cell and Molecular Biology program and in the Narasimhan Lab. She rotated in our lab in Spring '21, and continues to collaborate with us in her work characterizing signals of recent polygenic adaptation in humans using ancient DNA data. Olivia has a B.S. in Biochemistry and a minor in Biomedical Engineering from Colorado State University. Her research background is in high-throughput microbial engineering for biotech and agbiotech. She is broadly interested in computational biology. When Olivia is not working, she likes to go on bike tours and draw botanical illustrations.
Lisa Phan | PhD Rotation Student
Lisa rotated in the lab via the Cell and Molecular Biology Program at UT Austin. She received her B.S. in Biochemistry with a Math minor in Southern Methodist University, Dallas. She is interested in quantitative biology and the evolution of protein. When not working in the lab, she enjoys reading, playing the kalimba, and listening to TED Talks.
Sean Lau | Undergraduate Student
Sean is a pre-medical undergraduate student at UT Austin pursuing Bachelor's degrees in both Biology and Management. He is interested in population genetics, evolution, and their applications in medicine. Outside of research, Sean enjoys playing soccer, basketball, hiking, and listening to music.
Rebecca Knowlton | PhD Rotation Student
Rebecca is a PhD student in Statistics and Data Science and has completed a research elective with the lab. She had received her B.A in Mathematics from Trinity University and worked as an actuarial analyst for three years before starting her graduate program. Outside of work, she enjoys board games, reading, watching movies, and hiking.
Dinesh Elanchezhian | Undregarduate Student
Dinesh is a pre-medical undergraduate student at UT Austin pursuing a Bachelor of Science in both Economics and Computational Biology with a minor in Healthcare Business and a certificate in Scientific Computation. He’s interested in statistical genetics and its application within medicine. Outside of research, he enjoys learning about effective altruism, playing table tennis, and reading biographies and fantasy novels.
Amber Day | PhD Rotation Student
Amber is a graduate student in Statistics and Data Science and did a research elective in the lab. She had completed her Bachelor's degree at Texas State University studying Mathematics and Secondary Education and a Master's degree at the University of Rochester in Mathematics Education and one Master's degree at the State University of New York Brockport in Mathematics. Amber's research interests include functional graphical models, machine learning, biostatistics, and applications in the social sciences.