Liran Carmel 41st Lorne Genome Conference 2020

Liran Carmel

Liran Carmel did a PhD in applied mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Since 2008, he is at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he is now a professor of computational biology. Liran has won many awards, including the Michael Milken prize, the Farkash award and the Eshkol fellowship. Liran is studying a host of topics in molecular evolution, RNA biology and genetics and is particularly interested in human evolution and in understanding what makes us human. In recent years, Liran has been studying ancient DNA of anatomically modern humans, archaic humans (Neanderthals and Denisovans), mammoth and more. He developed a technique to reconstruct DNA methylation maps along ancient genomes, thus allowing the discovery of evolutionary changes in gene regulation. He showed that such regulatory changes underlie many of the human-specific traits, such as the unique architecture of our voice box. He also used these regulatory changes to suggest the first anatomical reconstruction of the little-known Denisovan, as well as to probe into the environments in which these ancient individuals lived.