Toomas Kivisild

Toomas Kivisild graduated as a Biologist and got his PhD in Genetics, from University of Tartu, Estonia, in 2000. Since then he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Medicine, at Stanford University (2002-3), Estonian Biocentre (2003-5), as the Professor and Head of the Department of Evolutionary Biology, University of Tartu (2005-6), and as a Lecturer and Reader in Human Evolutionary Genetics in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge since 2006. His current research interests include most broadly human evolution and evolutionary population genetics, with a particular focus on questions relating global genetic population structure with evolutionary processes such as selection, drift, migrations and admixture. Nine graduate students have completed their PhD under his supervision and currently he leads a research group of one postdoctoral research fellow and six PhD students who are working on ancient and modern DNA based patterns of genetic variation in human populations. He is a co-author of the 2^nd edition of ‘Human Evolutionary Genetics’ textbook and has more than 10 years of University lecturing experience and more than 6 years of experience of Tripos and examination coordination. He has published more than 100 peer reviewed papers, has been associate editor for journals like American Journal of Physical Anthropology, PLoS One, BMC Evolutionary Biology, Annals of Human Biology, and reviewer for several leading journals in his field.