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Ali Akbari serves as Senior Staff Scientist in the David Reich Lab at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He also holds the position of Research Associate in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. His work focuses on developing computational methods to analyze ancient DNA data and study patterns of natural selection in human populations over the past 10,000 years.
Akbari is the first author of the 2026 paper "Ancient DNA reveals pervasive directional selection across the last 10,000 years of human evolution," published in Nature, which examined thousands of ancient genomes from West Eurasia to identify hundreds of genetic variants under directional selection related to immunity, skin pigmentation, and other traits. He has contributed to advancements in techniques that distinguish signals of selection from demographic effects such as migration and genetic drift.
Explore the largest ancient DNA study showing natural selection accelerated human evolution over the past 10,000 years, with key insights from Harvard researchers.
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