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]
