Rate My Professor Rosa Fregel

Rosa Fregel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology, Cellular Biology and Genetics at the Universidad de La Laguna, working in the Area of Genetics within the field of Biology. She obtained her Bachelor's degree in Biology in 2003, a Diploma in Advanced Studies in 2005, and a PhD in Biology in 2010 from the Universidad de La Laguna. Her doctoral thesis, "La evolución genética de las poblaciones humanas canarias determinación mediante marcadores autosómicos y uniparentales," supervised by Dr. Ana María González Matilla and Dr. José María Larruga Riera, was funded by scholarships from Fundación CajaCanarias and the Gobierno Autonómico de Canarias. The thesis earned the European Quality Mention and the ULL Extraordinary Doctorate Award, leading to nine international publications, four in first-quartile journals.

From 2010 to 2013, Fregel served as an independent researcher at the Instituto de Medicina Legal de Las Palmas, optimizing protocols for DNA extraction from highly degraded forensic samples for Historical Memory projects. In 2014, she held a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fundación Dr. Manuel Morales at Dr. Carlos Bustamante's laboratory at Stanford University, conducting the first paleogenetic study of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean and characterizing ancient DNA from the malaria causative agent. From 2015 to 2017, Stanford University hired her to lead a paleogenomic project on the Neolithic transition in North Africa and the South Iberian Peninsula. She returned to the Universidad de La Laguna in 2018 with a Profesor Ayudante Doctor contract, reviving the ancient DNA research line and establishing her own research group, now as Associate Professor. Her research focuses on human population evolution via ancient DNA analysis, paleogenomics, population genetics of Canary Islands aborigines, effects of European colonization, Neolithic transitions, and Indian Ocean slave trade. Key publications include "The genomic history of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands" (2023), "The chronology of the human colonization of the Canary Islands" (2024), "Mitogenomes illuminate the origin and migration patterns of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands" (2018), and "Demographic history of Canary Islands male gene-pool: replacement of native lineages by European" (2009). She leads multiple funded projects and has garnered over 2,500 citations.