I am very excited to announce the publication of our recent paper Genomic insights into the early peopling of the Caribbean published in Science Magazine. In this work I collaborated with a large team of geneticists and archaeologists led by Kathrin Nägele (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History) and Hannes Schroeder (University of Copenhagen), and including researchers from the USA, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Europe. In this work we recover and analyze ancient paleogenomes from 93 ancient individuals who lived in several Caribbean islands between 3,200-400 years before present. Read the full text of the paper in Science and Lizzie Wade's excellent press coverage of our work for Science Magzine: Ancient DNA reveals diverse origins of Caribbean’s earliest inhabitants. To see Kathrin's excellent video abstract of the paper, describing the study's main findings, click here:

Reporter Lizzie Wade wrote an excellent feature for Science Magazine  on the historical relationship between social inequality, marginalization and pandemic diseases.  In this letter to the editor my coauthors and I provide expanded commentary on this work by discussing the specific impact of epidemic disease on Indigenous communities in the context of the current COVID19 pandemic. I am honored to have participated in drafting this letter, the result of of collaborative discussion led by and Liliana Dávalos (Stony Brook University) Alexis Mychajiliw (University of Oklahoma).

To see Krystal's amazing overview of what it means to decolonize DNA research follow her tweet talk thread here. I also highly recommend checking out the other speaker's interesting and very engaging tweet talks on the conference Twitter page @DecolonizeDNA or following their individual twitter profiles.

The conference and its amazing organizer also elicited some cool press coverage. I am very excited to have participated in this event and cannot wait for the next edition!
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Starting the year with the January 2020 issue of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News. Featuring an interviews from several researchers discussing the past and future of genomics research. I am honored to be featured alongside Dennis O'Rourke discussing the place of ancient DNA in our field. Access the full featured article here:  https://www.genengnews.com/insights/the-outlook-for-2020-and-beyond/
fields too.

Orlando Channel Spectrum 13 ran a story on our work in their evening news Genetic link found between modern-day Puerto Ricans, ancient Indigenous Tribe. Thanks to reporter Jesse Canales for the interview.

El Adoquín Times is a cultural newspaper in Puerto Rico. Reporter Marcos Del Valle interviewed me for the article ADN Taino on pages 4-5 of the November 2019 edition. Our research is also the inspiration for the cover art on this special edition commemorating the 500 years of the founding of the city of San Juan.

A few weeks ago, my former PhD adviser Anne Stone and myself had an awesome experience teaching the invited course Paleogenomics and Anthropology at the National School of Anthropology (ENAH) in Mexico City. We were invited as part of the invited professors program sponsored by the undergraduate and postgraduate programs in Physical Anthropology at ENAH, as well as the Molecular Genetics laboratory.  Our colleagues Maria Ávila-Arcos, Viridiana Villa, Miriam Bravo from LIIGH-UNAM, and Kelly Blevins from ASU also helped us teach this course.

The course was a week-long intensive featuring theory lectures, where we discussed basics of genomics, ancient DNA methods, and ethics among other topics. We also had laboratory and data analysis practical sessions. Tutorials and course materials for these practicals are freely available on my GitHub page here. 

The INAH Boletín for May 2019 features some media coverage of these training efforts here, including interviews with our hosts faculty members Victor Acuña-Alonzo and Maria Eugenia Peña from ENAH.

I was quoted by Ed Yong from The Atlantic in his recent article describing two recent genetic studies which have upended our understanding of the first peopling of the Americas. I was not an author on these studies but I shared my thoughts on the great work the authors did to connect with descendant and indigenous communities affected by the study results. Read the article here. 

On October 12th, due to weeklong discussions on the "Dia de la Raza" here in Mexico I was interviewed, along with Dr. Victor Acuña Alonzo (ENAH) and Dr. Sandra Romero Hidalgo (INMEGEN), on Radio UNAM 96.1 FM scicomm radio show and podcast "La ciencia que somos".  We talked about what genetics has told us about the first peopling of the Americas,  the role of migration and admixture in the post-contact Americas and why race is not a useful category for describing human variation. To listen click here (en español).

The art exhibit  Antillean Visions: Maps and the Making of the Caribbean just opened at the University of Miami Lowe Art Museum. It was organized by my awesome collaborator William J. Pestle and contains over 200 historic and contemporary maps of the Caribbean. I contributed two "DNA maps" extracted from my research showcasing how genetics can also serve to understand the island landscape and the peoples that live in it (see right). Check out more on the exhibit here. It will run from February 2 – May 27, 2018.

Our paper examining the Eurasian ancestry component of present-day Puerto Rico mitochondrial genomes is now published in Human Biology. We found that many Puerto Ricans have mtDNA lineages that share common ancestors with people from the Canary Islands and other parts of the circum-Mediterranean. This work was conducted under the leadership of Juan C. Martinez-Cruzado of University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. Press coverage of our paper by the Spanish newspaper El Diario is available here (en español).

Anne Stone and I were part of a multidisciplinary team, contributing DNA evidence to a large attempt to identify   the origins of unprovenienced skeletal remains for repatriation. Our paper on this topic has just been published in the Journal of Archaeological Sciences. Find it here. This work was led by researchers at Boise State University.