Dra. María C. Ávila Arcos
Population and Evolutionary Genomics
María obtained her BSc degree in Genomic Sciences from UNAM (National University of Mexico) in 2009. Soon after that she moved to Copenhagen, Denmark to study a Ph.D. specializing in Paleogenomics at the Centre for GeoGenetics under the supervision of Tom Gilbert. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2013 and stayed an extra year as a Postdoc. Before joining LIIGH as junior faculty in 2015, she was a Postdoc in Carlos Bustamante’s group at Stanford University for almost two years.
Her research interests turn around the study of human populations, past and present, to learn about the processes that generate the genetic makeup of groups of humans through time, with a particular interest in understudied populations from Mexico and Latin America. Her work combines the analysis of genetic data from living and past populations, and their pathogens, to understand cultural, demographic and adaptive processes that have shaped the observed patterns of diversity in such regions through time.
She served as LIIGH Coordinator from 2022 to 2025.
