People

Lara Cassidy graduated in Human Genetics from Trinity College Dublin in 2013, receiving a gold medal for her academic achievements. She worked as a research assistant under Prof. Jun Kitano at the National Institute of Genetics in Japan, publishing on speciation in stickleback fish populations. She was subsequently awarded a scholarship by the Irish Research Council to pursue a Ph.D. in ancient genomics at Prof. Dan Bradley's lab at the Trinity, which she was awarded in 2018. Her doctoral focus was the application of next generation sequencing technologies to the study of Irish prehistory, which resolved longstanding questions on the origins of the modern population. She expanded upon this work as a postdoctoral researcher, before soon joining the staff at the Department of Genetics as an assistant professor in 2020. Throughout her career, Lara has published extensively and with wide-reaching impact in ancient genomics. Her research has been repeatedly featured in top journals such as Nature, Science, PNAS and Nature Communications and covered by major international news outlets (New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, BBC). In 2019, she was awarded an honorary life fellowship at the Adelphi Genetics Forum.

Harry Little is a PhD student of ancient human genetics and his area of research is Ireland during the Neolithic period. The transition from foraging to farming is arguably one of the most significant in human history. Ireland underwent many changes during this period including the arrival of new people and the erection of many magnificent megalithic structures. It’s his goal to learn as much as he can about this mysterious race of people by conducting genome analysis on individuals from megalithic and non-megalithic burial sites around the country. For his undergraduate degree, he studied Biomedical Science in Trinity College and specialised in Genetics. He is a big fan of sports such as rugby and he loves to stay active. In secondary school his favourite subjects were biology and history, which he thinks is perfect, because he is now doing a PhD in ancient human genetics with a specific focus on Ireland during the Neolithic period.

Corey Alwell is a second year PhD student currently exploring the Irish Mesolithic through ancient DNA and molecular population paleogenomics. He is particularly interested in untangling the ancestries, lives, and legacies of these enagmatic people and in using ancient DNA to peer deep into a past that was, until recently, thought to be unknowable. He is originally from Co. Cavan in Ireland and completed his undergrad in Genetics in TCD in 2023, where he finished with a First Class Honours and a gold medal. He has previously worked in Fred Hutch Cancer Centre in Seattle in the labs of Drs Chris Johnston and Susan Bullman, as well as in Dr Rosa Fernandez' phylogenomics lab in Barcelona. When not in the lab Corey can be found dancing salsa and bachata or crocheting small animals.

Iseult Jackson did her PhD with Lara and Dan Bradley, focusing on human health in the past. Her PhD research involved both human and bacterial genomics, looking at genetic disease in the past, bacterial genome evolution and natural selection in humans. In her spare time, Iseult can generally be found running around outdoors or hiding with a book. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Computational Pathogenomics group in the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, where she studies pathogen genome evolution using ancient genomes.

Maeve McCann is a PhD graduate who worked on the historical population genomics of Ireland and Britain, focusing on how migration and social structure affect the genomes of people in different eras and areas. She is interested in the peculiarities of human history and the ability of genomic information to reveal not just broad trends but also individual stories lost to time. She is from the North-West of Ireland and graduated with a First Class Honours in Genetics at TCD. Before starting her PhD her prior research projects included plant developmental genetics, molecular ecology of cryptic bumblebees and early vertebrate evolution. Maeve enjoys working with the wider ancient genome team and communicating science. In her spare time she can be found playing folk music and in the outdoors.