Biography

My name is Arslan Zaidi and I’m a statistical geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania. I’m interested in understanding how demographic processes such as admixture, population bottlenecks, expansions, non-random mating, and selection shape genetic variation underlying complex traits in humans.

I am from Pakistan, where I completed my undergraduate degree in genetics from the University of Karachi under the mentorship of Dr. Ahsan Vahidy. My graduate work, which I did with Mark Shriver at Penn State, focused on studying the evolutionary genetics of physical traits such as skin pigmentation and 3D facial shape. Then I did a postdoc with Kateryna Makova, also at Penn State, where I studied the transmission dynamics of mitochondrial DNA heteroplasmies in human families, and mito-nuclear interactions in admixed populations. Currently, I’m an NIH K99/R00 postdoctoral fellow with Iain Mathieson at The University of Pennsylvania and will be starting in the Spring of 2023 as an assistant professor in the Genetics, Cell, and Developmental Biology Department and Institute of Health Informatics at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

You can reach me at aazaidi [at] pennmedicine [dot] upenn [dot] edu.