Magdalena Gayà Vidal
Auxiliary Researcher
I am a biologist interested in human evolution and history. My PhD (Universitat de Barcelona & Université Toulouse III) was focused on two Native American populations from Bolivia. I investigated the genetic relationships between Aymaras and Quechuas from the Altiplano by genotyping different kinds of markers and integrating the genetic results in a linguistic and historical context. Afterwards I did an MSc in Bioinformatics and I carried out the 2nd year project in an Evolutionary Genomics group (IMIM) searching for signatures of positive selection in the human lineage. From 2012 to 2014 I did a postdoc (IBB-Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) working on a project focused on human polymorphic inversions where I did the nucleotide variation analysis.
In December 2014, I started working in the group of Prof Jorge Rocha (CIBIO/InBIO) to study populations of Southern Angola in order to address several questions regarding the demographic history of this region.