David Balding's home page

Statistical Genomics

Honorary Professor of Statistical Genomics, Melbourne Integrative Genomics (MIG)

djbhands

I have taken early retirement from U Melbourne (June 2021), but continue many academic activities in my role as honorary.  I don’t plan to take on any more students and will start to wind down other activities, though so far in retirement I have submitted more papers than when I was on full pay.
MIG and I are both 50/50 in the School of BioSciences and the School of Mathematics & Statistics.  I also am honorary at the UCL Genetics Institute in London, where I was based full time from 2009 to 2014.
My educational background is in maths (D Phil Mathematics, Oxford 1990) and since then I have worked to develop and apply mathematical/ statistical/ computational methods and ideas in genetics and genomics, including:
  • mathematical modelling of
    1. ancestry and relatedness,
    2. demographic history of populations,
    3. evolutionary processes such as mechanisms of selection;
  • statistical methods for the evaluation of forensic DNA profile evidence;
  • measuring relatedness and its role in genomics analyses, including association studies;
  • heritability and the genomic architecture of complex traits;
  • predicting phenotypes from genotype and other data;
  • analysis of other omics data (transcriptome, methylome, etc) together with genomics data.

I have worked with collaborators in many different fields, on genetic aspects of forensic science, crop research, ancient DNA, drug development and disease.  I have consulted with government and industry in many areas, most often relating to DNA profile evidence.  I also played a key role in synthesising and evaluating the evidence for certain bones found under a car park to be those of English king Richard III.

Some key words for my research:

• Computational statistics
• Epidemiology and Biostatistics
• Evaluation of forensic DNA profiles
• Evolutionary Genetics
• Genetic Epidemiology
• Population Genetics
Please see the menu at the top right of the page for links to further details of my research.