When and where? 9-13 November 2026 | Tartu, Estonia
How can simulations help us better understand population genomic methods and their limitations? This workshop combines discussions of selected topics in population genomics with hands-on programming exercises, allowing participants to explore key concepts through simulation. Along the way, participants will develop practical skills in modeling, simulation, and data analysis and will have the opportunity to apply these approaches to their own research questions.
Workshop outline
This workshop will be organised in sessions and start with an extensive introduction to the R package slendr as a powerful, modern framework to program demographic models, simulate genomic data, and compute a wide range of population genomic statistics from such simulations, all revolving around the tree-sequence a core genomic data structure. We will practice programming slendr modeling and analysis pipelines by simulation-based exploration of fundamental concepts in population genetics, such as effective population size, nucleotide diversity, FST, Tajima’s D, or the allele frequency spectrum, as well as investigating the inner workings of f-statistics (f3, f4, f4-ratio). We will explore the behavior and limitations of these metrics across various relevant simulated scenarios to practice skills in programming simulations and statistical workflows with slendr, while learning general strategies for applying this methodology to other modeling problems. We will also explore the ideas behind methods for dating admixture events and other haplotype-based methods, and conclude with several small “case study projects” focused on developing complete benchmarking and exploratory pipelines inspired by practical examples from published research, intended to inspire programming custom simulations during self-driven practice sessions.
Instructor: Dr. Martin Petr (Globe Institute, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark).
Important Details
The application deadline is 26 October 2026. Confirmation of participation: 30 October 2026.
To apply, please send an email to (alena.kushniarevich@ut.ee). The application should include a short motivation letter (max. 2000 char. with spaces) and CV (1 page A4).
The number of places is limited to 20.
The workshop is primarily intended for Master and PhD students who have prior background knowledge of genetics and are interested in learning the fundamental concepts in population genomics while developing skills for simulation-based modeling. Of course, other researchers seeking to solidify their knowledge on these topics are also welcome. Familiarity with the R programming language at the level of the ability to write scripts for working with tabular data as well as basic knowledge of data visualisation will be useful, and resources for prerequisite material on R and data science for those needing a refresher will be provided prior to the workshop.
Practical information
The course will be held in person only. Working language: English.
Costs: the course is free of charge. Travel, accommodation, and food should be covered by the participants.
Organizers
The course is organized by the Institute of Genomics of Tartu University within the EU Horizon Europe Twinning project ECHO: Expanding Concept and Methodology for Human Past Studies in the Eastern Baltics Countries (2024-2027) (https://echo-project.eu/)
Contact information: Alena Kushniarevich alena.kushniarevich@ut.ee; Kadri Raav (kadri.raav@ut.ee).
