News

Apr 2025

Ajay Nadig had his paper published in Nature Genetics: Transcriptome-wide analysis of differential expression in perturbation atlases. You can also read the accompanying News & Views article. Congratulations, Ajay!

Wenhan Lu presented a platform talk and Hui Li presented a poster at ProbGen 2025

M.D./Ph.D. student Ajay Nadig successfully defended his dissertation. Congratulations, Ajay!
The O'Connor lab welcomed new research assistant Shenghan Zhang

New preprint from Hui Li et al., "Improved heritability partitioning and enrichment analyses using summary statistics with graphREML"
The O'Connor Lab presented three posters and a platform talk at ASHG:
- Wenhan Lu - Heritability and effect-size distribution of rare and de novo protein-coding variation (platform talk)
- Pouria Salehi Nowbandegani - Comprehensive identification and characterization of genetic variants within a pangenome reference
- Hui Li - Improved heritability partitioning and enrichment analyses using summary statistics with graphREML
- Amber Shen - Efficient genealogical compression for biobank-scale datasets

Ajay Nadig gave a talk at World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics (WCPG) in Singapore, titled "How Much Do Rare De Novo Variants Contribute to Autism?"

The O'Connor Lab welcomed three new members:
- Ph.D. student Amber Shen
- Postdoctoral researcher Noah Connally, who will be co-advised by Elinor Karlsson
- Postdoctoral researcher Kangcheng Hou, who will be co-advised by Alkes Price
The O'Connor Lab presented three talks at the Broad Institute Medical and Population Genetics Seminar Series:
- Ajay Nadig - Aggregate Contribution of De Novo Mutations to Autism
- Hui Li - Improved Heritability Partitioning using GraphREML
- Amber Shen - Genotype Compression Using Inferred Genealogies

Dr. Hui Li received the SSGG Student Paper award at Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) 2024 in Portland and gave a talk, titled "Improved heritability partitioning with graphREML." Congratulations Hui!

Ph.D. student Hui Li graduated from the Harvard School of Public Health Biostatistics program, and will remain in the lab as a postdoctoral researcher. Congratulations Hui!
M.D./Ph.D. students Dr. Dan Weiner and Dr. Tushar Kamath graduated from the lab, and both are entering the MGH physician-scientist residency program. Congratulations Dan and Tushar!