In this talk Dr Leslie will present some of the soon to be published findings from the People of the British Isles project. In particular he will show that using newly developed statistical techniques one can uncover subtle genetic differences between people from different regions of the UK at a hitherto unprecedented level of detail. For example, one can separate the neighbouring counties of Devon and Cornwall, or two islands of Orkney, using only genetic information. Dr Leslie will then show how these genetic differences reflect current historical and archaeological knowledge, as well as providing new insights into the historical make up of the British population, and the movement of people from Europe into the British Isles.
This is the first detailed analysis of very fine-scale genetic differences and their origin in a population of very similar humans. The key to the findings of this study is the careful sampling strategy and an approach to statistical analysis that accounts for the correlation structure of the genome.

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Bio:
Stephen Leslie is a statistician working in the field of mathematical genetics. Dr Leslie obtained his doctorate from the Department of Statistics, University of Oxford in 2008, under the supervision of Professor Peter Donnelly FRS. After graduating Dr Leslie took up a position as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Statistics at Oxford. He was then awarded one of the prestigious Nuffield Department of Medicine Scientific Leadership Fellowships to work on the population genetics of HIV and other pathogens. In late 2010 Dr Leslie was recruited by Sir Walter Bodmer FRS and Peter Donnelly to lead the statistical analyses for the People of the British Isles Project (POBI), a major UK research project to investigate fine-scale genetic differences across the British Isles, including the consequences and causes of any observed differences. In February 2012 Dr Leslie returned to Australia to establish his own research group at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute as the Group Leader in Statistical Genetics. He also holds an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship.

Dr Leslie's work covers several aspects of statistical and population genetics. His main interests are in detecting and controlling for population structure in genetic data; and imputing complex genetic variation from SNP data, with a particular focus on HLA and other immune-associated loci.