Rate My Professor Kirk Lohmueller

His research develops and implements statistical methods to study genetic variation in humans and other species, with a primary focus on population genetic questions including natural selection—particularly negative selection removing deleterious mutations—inference of population history, conservation genetics, medical genetics, and forensic applications. Key areas include inbreeding depression and extinction risk in endangered species such as the vaquita and Florida panthers, adaptive introgression from Neanderthals and Denisovans, dominance models for nonsynonymous mutations, and genomic simulations. Lohmueller has received the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2014), Searle Scholar Award (2014), UCLA Hellman Fellowship (2015), and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Faculty Teaching Award (2019). With over 16,000 citations and an h-index of 49, his influential publications include "The critically endangered vaquita is not doomed to extinction by inbreeding depression" (Science, 2022), "Strongly deleterious mutations are a primary determinant of extinction risk due to inbreeding depression" (Evolution Letters, 2021), "Determining the factors driving selective effects of new nonsynonymous mutations" (PNAS, 2017), and "Deleterious variation shapes the genomic landscape of introgression" (PLoS Genetics, 2018). He teaches courses such as Population Genetics (EE BIOL 135/235) and Advanced Statistics in Ecology and Evolution, and has held roles including Vice Chair of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (2021-2022).