● Genetic Historian · Postdoctoral Researcher · Lasisi Lab · University of Michigan
DNA is a historical document. I integrate genetic data and historical archives to understand how human variation changes through time.
I am a genetic historian studying how migration, admixture, and social history shape human variation. By reading DNA alongside the written historical record, I use skin pigmentation—a highly variable and evolutionarily dynamic trait—as a model for understanding how populations change as they come together.
Skin pigmentation is a dynamic, complex trait that I have studied for years. It varies more than almost any other human trait, so it captures the upper bounds of human variation and tracks how that variation moves in actively admixing populations.
Most population-history methods were built for old, well-separated groups. I extend them to highly admixed, recently diverged populations, and ask how a gene’s place in the melanogenesis network and a population’s history together shape constraint and adaptation.
DNA is a historical document, and it says the most when read next to actual ones. I pair historical and modern genomes with legal codes and archival records to ask how moments in history redirected admixture and variation.
Objective skin measurements are not automatically unbiased. Analysing 15,000+ reflectance spectra, we show that melanin progressively masks hemoglobin’s spectral signature, so visible-range erythema detection, whether by spectrophotometers, clinical cameras, or AI, loses sensitivity in the darkest skin, where data are also scarcest.
The first harmonized longitudinal record of US forensic DNA infrastructure: a monthly national (NDIS) time series reconstructed from archived FBI webpages, state-level totals and policy metadata for all 50 states, and standardized demographic data from public-records requests.
Yemko Pryor, PhD