Winter school 2023

The Tartu Winter school on Evolution, Genomics and Medicine 2023 

4-8 December 2023

online workshop

This is the third school of a series of annual international courses that brings together evolution, genetics and medicine. The school is organised by the cGEM group at the Institute of Genomics, University of Tartu, Estonia within the frames of H2020 grant no 810645 (www.cgem.ut.ee).

Programme

The course is focussed on methods and resources for identifying the present-day consequences of past natural selection for phenotypic variation and susceptibility to disease, and will cover advanced methods for inferring evolutionary histories from genomics data and linking them to large-scale genomic and functional datasets. Lectures introducing theoretical concepts and methods will be combined with workshops designed to give hands-on experience.

Schedule

Day 1 (Monday, 04/12): Natural selection inference

10:00 Introduction to the summer school (Anders Eriksson)

10:30 A primer in the theory and methods for inferring natural selection (Vasili Pankratov)

12:30 Lunch break

13:30 Practical on evolutionary inference with Relate and Clues (Vasili Pankratov)

17:00 End of day

Day 2 (Tuesday, 05/12): Evolution of complex traits

10:00 Q&A

11:00 Evolution of complex traits (Anders Eriksson)

12:00 Lunch break

13:00 Testing polygenic selection with PAML – method overview and practical (Vasili Pankratov)

17:00 End of day

Day 3 (Wednesday, 06/12): Inferring selection from ancient DNA

10:00 Introduction to ancient DNA analysis (Anders Eriksson)

11:00 Practical (Anders Eriksson)

13:00 End of day / self-study time

Day 4 (Thursday, 07.12.2023) Introgression from archaic humans and deep learning methods for evolutionary inference

10.00 Python Data Science 101 Practical (Mayukh Mondal)

11.00 Neandertal admixture Theory (Danat Yermakovich)

12.00 Neandertal admixture Practical (Danat Yermakovich)

13:30 Lunch break

14:30 Neural Network Theory (Mayukh Mondal)

15:30 Neural Network Practical (Mayukh Mondal)

17:00 End of day

Day 5 (Friday 08/12) Theory and applications of immunoprofiling

10:00 Molecular profiling of the immune system – methods and applications

11:00 Practical

12:00 Final Q&A

13:00 End of summer school

Teachers

Anders Eriksson: Evolutionary of complex traits
Helle Sadam: Theory and applications of immunoprofiling
Vasili Pankratov: Tree-based based methods of evolutionary inference
Danat Yermakovich: Introgression from archaic humans
Mayukh Mondal: Deep learning methods for evolutionary inference

The school will be held online December 4 – 8 and will be free of charge.  

Application

The course is aimed at PhD students of mathematics and bioinformatics with an interest in evolution. We also welcome students from biological and medical backgrounds with sufficient background in computational analysis, advanced undergraduates, and postdocs.

Applications are to be sent by email to merit.kreitsberg@ut.ee. The application should contain:

• Full contact data (name, affiliation, postal address, email address)
• A brief CV containing prior studies and/or positions
• A one-paragraph description of scientific interest and motivation
• List of publications (if any)

Please send all relevant information in one pdf file (not in the email text). The deadline for applications is November 13 and we shall notify all applicants by November 17.

Please do not hesitate to contact the organisers for any questions (Dr Anders Eriksson, anders.eriksson@ut.ee, or Merit Kreitsberg, merit.kreitsberg@ut.ee).