Wei Lab
Principal Investigator: Xinzhu Wei
Institution: Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)
Primary Subfield: Genetics/Genomics
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
Project Summary The Wei Lab develops accurate and scalable inference methods in population genetics and statistical genetics. In the next few years, we will focus on understanding the evolution and genetic basis of complex traits. Large biobank datasets with hundreds of thousands of human genomes and tens of thousands of phenotypic measurements provide unprecedented opportunities to understand complex phenotypes. At the same time, these massive data sets demand more scalable and unbiased computational methods. My lab recently developed new algorithms and data structures to improve the scalability of standard computations involving genotype matrices, including the calculation of heritability components and linkage disequilibrium scores. Our RSHE method runs 10-100x faster than the current state-of-the-art method to allow heritability analysis on biobank-size whole-genome sequencing data. Further methodological improvements will require new conceptualizations of the genotype-phenotype relationships. Conventional statistical genetics uses genotype matrices directly, ignoring that genetic polymorphisms are organized by gene genealogy into an interpretable graph structure. Whole-genome…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R35GM150579-04: Dissecting the genetics and evolution of complex traits using whole-genome genealogies (2026)
- 5R35GM150579-03: Dissecting the genetics and evolution of complex traits using whole-genome genealogies (2025)
- 5R35GM150579-02: Dissecting the genetics and evolution of complex traits using whole-genome genealogies (2024)
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