Cindy G. Santander

Bio

I’m a human evolutionary geneticist with a broad interest in evolution, health, disease, and host-pathogen interactions. From deadly encounters with ancient infections to the intimate ones with other early hominins, my research aims to understand how we as a species have evolved and adapted across time.

My research has explored both deep and recent human evolution dating back from ancient retroviral integrations in the host, to characterizing ancient hominin contribution in modern human populations, to ultimately looking at epidemic-driven selection in the past thousand years.

A significant portion of my research has involved method development based on both real data as well as simulations. During my DPhil I developed software to detect endogenous retroviruses and other transposable elements in host genomes as well as establishing good practices when searching for archaic or ancient contributions without an archaic reference.

I am specifically interested in host-pathogen interactions that have taken place in recent human evolutionary history and understanding how complex processes such as admixture and selection have played a role in the heritability of immune traits when confronted with a range of infectious diseases.

Currently I am a senior researcher at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark working with Ida Moltke on developing a framework for detecting epidemic-driven selection.

Publications

My updated publication list can be found here: