Genomic-Relatedness Matching Expands Population Coverage, Improves Power, and Reduces Bias in Genetic Association Analyses https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.14.26353140v1

Very excited about this preprint that we just posted. It introduces the Genomic-Relatedness Matched Association (GRMA) study. It’s an extension to family-based GWAS that uses extended relatives beyond only siblings in diverse-ancestry data with very little bias. (Link below.)

Was listening to the Wellness, Actually podcast by @profemilyoster.bsky.social and @fperrywilson.bsky.social (It's excellent, btw!), and they cited one of my papers! I feel so famous!

Please repost: My department at USC is hiring for a teaching-track faculty position. We are looking for someone principally to teach statistics for biologists, but there will be opportunities for other courses in statistics & algorithms applied to biology usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange...

Happy to share a new preprint, where we studied the expected outcomes of polygenic embryo screening in real-world IVF patients. Key conclusion: gains are very small for most infertility patients, with risk reductions under 5%. 🧵1/12 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Substack: "Owning All the Numbers." A key step in research training.

One concern that I don't see people talking about much is how AI will affect the rhythm of grant applications for stat gen work.

Over the course of 2025, UKB researchers were forced to move all of their data analysis to the cloud rather than working with local copies. What was the effect of this move on scientific output? Here is a simple first pass at answering that question.

CSWEP strongly condemns Larry Summers’ behavior as revealed in the email correspondence with the late Jeffrey Epstein. While abuse of power in the economics profession is not new, rarely has the intent behind such abuse been so clearly stated.

University of Colorado Boulder Department of Psychology & Neuroscience is searching for TWO tenure track assistant professors. This is open to all department areas, including Behavioral, Psychiatric, and Statistical Genetics🧬 jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

Excited to share our preprint on PGI portability across ancestries—now on bioRxiv. With co-authors @aysuo.bsky.social, @paturley.bsky.social, @alextisyoung.bsky.social, and @Dan_J_Benjamin. Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025... Thread below for details.

Settings -> Content and media -> uncheck 'autoplay videos and GIFs'

Excited to present our new tool "PEStimate", an online app for predicting risk reductions after Polygenic Embryo Screening (PES). Find the app here: polygenicembryo.shinyapps.io/pestimate/ Preprint: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

I'm looking for a PhD student to do some trailblazing at the frontier of personality genomics and lifespan gene-environment transactions (start Fall 2026)! If you want to work with me: psychology.msu.edu/graduatestud... (PS @drmeltemyucel.bsky.social is taking a student too, in moral psych/dev!)

New pre-print online: Imputing parental genotypes through Mendelian Imputation: Ethical and Legal Considerations osf.io/preprints/ps...

RD optimal bw question: The CCT approach in rdrobust minimizes the MSE assuming you use local polynomial trends. Then it does a bias correction, which reduces the bias but increases the SEs. But then doesn't that mean that the new estimate no longer minimizes the MSE? #econsky

PGI Repository v2.0 preprint out! A 🧵 on the main results and updates @robel-alemu.bsky.social @paturley.bsky.social @alextisyoung.bsky.social

The Life of Tau

I am recruiting a quantitative/computational postdoc to my group at UCLA. This is a great opportunity to work on foundational theory, methods, and software in statistical genetics. Link to apply: recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF10275. Please repost!

"Complete the USC Sustainability Survey, and you’ll have the chance to win a $50 USC Bookstore e-gift card. Keck Medicine of USC employees also have an opportunity to win one of two e-bikes!" Why do I feel like the monkey who got the cucumber...?

Cool new work using changes in compulsory schooling laws & data from @ukbiobank.bsky.social by @paturley.bsky.social & colleagues: Additional time spent in education reduces Alzheimer's risk: www.nber.org/bh/20251/add... #econsky #episky

Very nice piece about "race science" and its implications in @undark.org. Nice and clear on the consensus issues (so-called race science is scientifically invalid) and thoughtful on more difficult questions of what should be done about it in terms of academic freedom and open science.

My coauthors and I are featured on the NBER homepage for our work on education and dimentia risk! www.nber.org

Had the chance to discuss this paper at the NBER Insurance meeting last year. It was excellent then and it's even better now.

(1/4) Excited to announce our new method that can estimate the predictive performance of _future_ genetic tests for common diseases (polygenic indexes, PGIs). We showcase the method by evaluating the impact of this fast-improving technology on critical illness insurance. SSRN: tinyurl.com/37rtbujx

**Call for Papers** The Advances in Social Genomics Conference Series (TAGC) May 14-16, 2025 UW-Madison @uwmadison.bsky.social Deadline for submissions: March 7, 2025 Funding available for presenters Keynotes: Kelly Bakulski and Dan Belsky isg.wisc.edu/events/the-a...

"We are aware of other universities that might pay salaries to professors. Our university, however, never does. This is a deliberate decision, as we not want people to do research for any other reason than scientific interest.”

Trying to apply for a Re-entry supplement for someone. To get it, he cannot be hired before the supplement is submitted and he must have a eRA commons ID through USC. USC cannot give him an ID until he is hired. I don't understand how this is supposed to work...

I am at the "I guess this hoodie doesn't have TOO much vomit on it" stage of my parental leave.

An impressive preprint reporting a major advance in preimplantation genetic testing: Sequencing the entire genomes of IVF embryos, non-invasively, by amplifying DNA from embryos' spent culture medium. 🧵 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

I made a Google quiz using the poems listed on the paper’s OSF site if you want to try your luck at guessing which are human and which are LLM. forms.gle/nGCGawDb9c6f...

Is there anyone on here that has applied for a Re-entry Research Supplement from NIH? (grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...) I have someone who seems like an ideal candidate for this, but I have a few questions.

Have you ever wondered: What is your position in the distribution of wealth? How would you be affected by a change in wealth taxes? How would others be affected? Find out at wealthometer.org! Just updated with the most recent wealth data for AT, DE, ES, IT & GR!

This is today! Hope lots of you get to stop by and ask my student really hard questions!

I was just reminded of the time I thought I had run 1000 replications of a simulation spread across 200 processors, and as I was preparing the manuscript for submission, I realized I had actually run the same 5 replication 200 times. #youliveyoulearn

Want to hear something funny? Yeah, me neither. But it's out of my control: My book, Understanding The Nature-Nurture Debate, was released today. Not today, but I hope everyone will forgive me if I write a little about it over the next few weeks. www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

Not at #ASHG24 this year, but my excellent grad student, Dylan Steinecke, has a poster on our new sibling-based heritability estimator. Standard errors 10 times smaller than existing methods with no extra assumptions. See how on Fri, Nov 8, 2:30-4:40pm at Board 4147F!

🚨Writing to say that I am actively recruiting PhD students in the clinical -or- behavioral, psychiatric, and statistical genetics program (BPSG) at CU Boulder for a Fall 2025 start date. My lab focuses on genomic methods development and applications to psychiatric and aging outcomes (e.g., dementia)

I made a starter pack full of statistical genetics (adjacent) scientists. it covers all flavours of behaviour, psychiatric, social science and population genetics people. One click follow all of em! let me know if I missed key people!

We are seeking RAs for social-science genomics research beginning in summer 2025. We do good work and foster a supportive environment! Please send the application materials specified in the below link directly to [email protected]. danieljbenjamin.com/_files/ugd/2... #econsky

Here's a pretty good summary of the state of the field for how genetic data can be applied in economics research. On top of tying much of the field together in a consistent framework, there are also a handful of novel theoretical results. Excited to see this out! t.co/d7g1SEEB6C

I love the idea of the UMAP just doing the best he can with the data and assumptions he has available. Makes me want to root for him a bit more even though I know deep down he's really not up to the task. Heart of a champion!