Mingzuyu Pan
PhD Student, Bioinformatics and Genomics, Penn State, United States
I am a fourth year PhD student in the Bioinformatics and Genomics program at Penn State, advised by Zachary Szpiech. My broad research interests fall into two areas: theoretical population genetics and evolutionary human genetics. During my PhD, I have been focusing on the theory and methods of runs of homozygosity (ROH) and am deeply curious about the landscape of deleterious mutation load. I work with both empirical and simulated data and have extensive experience with SLiM for forward-in-time simulation. Beyond these core areas, I am also drawn to spatial population genetics and conservation genetics.
Before coming to Penn State, I completed my Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at Beijing Normal University. During the final years of my undergraduate studies, I worked with Jackson Champer at Peking University, where I began my research career through computational simulation of gene drives.
Outside of research, I am an avid classical music listener. I’m a devoted audience of Augustin Hadelich and Krystian Zimerman. I write literary fiction in Chinese, and am a faithful reader of Kazuo Ishiguro. I also raised two tuxedo cats from six weeks old, and they are now family.