Alison Etheridge

• 
  Online Colloquium: Modelling Genes: the Backwards and Forwards of Mathematical Population Genetics
  Alison Etheridge
  How can we explain the patterns of genetic variation in the world around us? The genetic composition of a population can be changed by natural selection, mutation, mating, and other genetic, ecological and evolutionary mechanisms. How do they interact with one another, and what was their relative importance in shaping the patterns that we see today? This question lies at the heart of theoretical population genetics.
  Whereas the pioneers of the field could only observe genetic variation indirectly, by looking at traits of individuals in a population, researchers today have direct access to DNA sequences, but making sense of this wealth of data presents a major scientific challenge and mathematical models play a decisive role.
  In this lecture we'll discuss how to distill our understanding into workable models and then briefly explore the remarkable power of our simple mathematical caricatures.
• 
  A model for evolution in a spatial continuum
  Alison Etheridge
  Classical models for gene flow fail in (at least) three ways. First, they cannot explain patterns in data observed over large scales; second, they predict much more genetic diversity than is observed; and third, they asssume that genetic loci evolve independently. I shall describe, as time permits, results of joint projects with Nick Barton, Nathanael Berestycki, Jerome Kelleher and Amandine Veber in which we have proposed a framework for modelling populations that are distributed across a spatial continuum and analysed aspects of a particular model that arises in this framework that we have called the spatial Lambda-Fleming-Viot process.