Vladimir Shchur

Researchers of the HSE International Laboratory of Statistical and Computational Genomics together with their international colleagues have proposed a new statistical method for analysing population admixture that makes it possible to determine the time and number of migration waves more accurately. The history of Colombians and Mexicans (descendants of Native Americans, Spaniards and Africans) features two episodes of admixture that occurred about 350 and 200 years ago for Mexicans and 400 and 100 years ago for Colombians. The results were published in the Plos Genetics journal.

Vladimir Shchur, the Head and a Senior Research Fellow at the International Laboratory of Statistical and Computational Genomics, talks about the lab, its research projects and their practical applications.

Researchers of HSE Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM), in cooperation with their colleagues from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), have developed software to model the spread of the COVID-19 global pandemic. This is the world’s fastest Viral Genealogy Simulator (VGsim). For more details about this scalable simulator, read the reprint on medRxiv. The code is freely available at GitHub.

Biologists and mathematicians from HSE University, Skoltech and the RAS Kharkevich Institute have studied the spread of COVID-19 in Russia. The main part of the study was completed in late June, but until October, the team was working with data following the reviewers’ recommendations. The paper was published on January 28, 2021 in the journal Nature Communications. MIEM students spoke about their contribution to the research.

The HSE International Laboratory of Statistical and Computational Genomics has launched an online school for applied population genetics and analysis. The school does not require special knowledge in biology and is aimed at students, graduate students, and postdocs in mathematics, physics, and computer programming.

The first research seminar of the International Laboratory of Statistical and Computational Genomics had been postponed almost a month due to COVID-19. In April, however, the event finally took place. Laboratory Head Vladimir Shchur discusses what life is like for scientists in self-isolation during the pandemic, what genomics is, and why gesturing is important when teaching online.

For ten years now, HSE has been holding an annual grant competition for researchers who wish to start new international laboratories at HSE in collaboration with leading foreign scholars and scientists. The most recent competition reached its conclusion this past November, and now some of the selected proposed labs have already begun operation. Who are the competition winners and what kind of research will they be doing?

Projects have won the competition for the creation of international laboratories at HSE University for the period from December 1, 2019 to December 31, 2022.