Sohini Ramachandran | |
|---|---|
| Education | Stanford University |
| Alma mater | Stanford University |
| Scientific career | |
| Thesis | The signature of historical migrations on human population genetic data (2007) |
| Doctoral advisor | Marcus Feldman |
| Website | https://brown.edu/Research/Ramachandran_Lab/ |
Sohini Ramachandran is professor at Brown University known for her work in evolutionary biology and population genetics.
Ramachandran's parents were both professors. [1] In the summer before her senior year of high school, Ramachandran completed a research project in plant genomics under the guidance of Marcus Feldman, which won her the fourth place prize in the 1998 Westinghouse Science Talent Search, [2] where when she was the youngest finalist in the group. [3] Ramachandran earned a B.S. from Stanford University in 2002. She went on to complete a Ph.D. at Stanford University in the Department of Biological Sciences, advised by Marcus Feldman. Her dissertation research was dissertation was titled "The signature of historical migrations on human population genetic data." [4] Following her PhD, she was in the Harvard Society of Fellows as a postdoctoral researcher with John Wakeley in Harvard University's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. [5] She moved to Brown University in 2010 and was promoted to professor in 2021. [5] In 2019, she was a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. [6]
Ramachandran's research group uses statistical and mathematical modeling techniques to study evolutionary biology and population genetics. Her early research examined the genetic relationships originating within people from Africa, [7] [8] where she showed that diversity decreases as distance from Africa increases. [9] She has also investigated the use of genetic tools to track infectious diseases [10] [11] and shown that while more outbreaks are occurring, fewer people are getting infected. [12] She has also shown a lack of genetic evidence for selection for language at the FOXP2 site. [13]
In 2012, Ramachandran received a Sloan Research Fellowship [14] and was named a Pew Scholar. [15] From Brown University she has received the Henry Merritt Wriston Fellowship (2016) [16] and the Philip J. Bray Award for excellence in teaching. [17] In 2019, she received a Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering. [18] [19]