Janet Kelso

Janet Kelso heads the Computational Ancient Genomics research group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany. Her group develops innovative computational methods to analyze ancient DNA, with a particular focus on the genomes of archaic humans such as Neandertals and Denisovans. Her work has been instrumental in identifying the genetic changes that distinguish modern humans from their archaic relatives, and in understanding how gene flow between these groups has shaped modern human genetic diversity. This research has provided insights into past human populations and the genetic legacy of ancient interbreeding. Janet earned her Ph.D. in bioinformatics at the South African National Bioinformatics Institute, University of the Western Cape, under the supervision of Professor Winston Hide. She is an active member of the computational biology community; she has served on the Board of Directors of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) since 2005 and was named an ISCB Fellow in 2015 in recognition of her scientific contributions and leadership. She is on the Editorial boards of several journals and currently serves as co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Bioinformatics.