Education

2004 - 2006

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
Postdoctoral fellow under Dr. Svante Pääbo

2002 - 2003

Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics, Leipzig, Germany
Postdoctoral fellow under Dr. Molly Przeworski

1996 - 2001

Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Ph.D. in Biological Sciences under Dr. Marcus W. Feldman

1992 - 1996

Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA
B.S. in Honors Biology with a minor in mathematics

Employment

2022-present

Covid-19 Modeling Consortium, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA
Research Associate including overseeing undergraduate researchers

2010-present

Mother

2007-2010

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
Research Associate

Summers 1998-2001

Lecturer in statistics for high school students and teachers
NSF-HHMI Villanova Summer Research Institute, Villanova, PA, USA

Summers 1994-1997

Resident assistant and instructor in math/biology for high school students
NSF-HHMI Young Scholars Program

Fall 1994 –

Spring 1996

Teaching Assistant for genetics
Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA

Spring 1994 – Summer 1996

Independent research in population genetics under Dr. R. William Marks

Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA

Other Teaching and Research Experience (see also Employment)

Spring 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010

Guest Lecturer, Human Molecular Genetics and Evolution Class

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany

Summer 2004

Mentored and oversaw a summer intern, Julia Klopotek
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany

2002-2003

Mentored and oversaw a diploma thesis, Stephanie Kaube
Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics, Leipzig, Germany

Summer 1999

Summer School in Complex Systems
Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, USA

Fall 1998, Spring 1997, Winter 1997

Teaching assistant in introductory biology, behavioral ecology and biostatistics.
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Summer 1993

Research assistant to Dr. Nicholas R.S. Hall and associates

Psychoimmunology Division, University South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

Honors and Grants

2002

Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics Research Grant

1999

Centennial Teaching Assistant Award, Stanford University

1996 - 2001

Howard Hughes Medical Research predoctoral fellowship

1996

National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, declined

1996

Mendel Medallion, Academic Excellence in Sciences, Villanova University

1996

Gallen Award, Service and Achievement in Biology, Villanova University

1995 - 1996

Goldwater Scholar scholarship

1992 - 1996

Villanova Scholar scholarship

Invited Talks

October 2008

The story of FOXP2: Insights into detecting selection
Evolution, Ecology and Systematics Lecture Series for First Years University of Munich, Munich, Germany

July 2006

Linkage disequilibrium and recombination detection
BBSRC Summer School on Molecular Evolution & Diversity, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland

December 2003

Effect of study design on allele frequency spectrum in humans.
2nd DNA polymorphisms in Human Populations, Paris, France

October 2000

How much variation can a model of balancing selection maintain?
Department of Biology, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA

Publications

Ptak, S.E. et al. 2024. Survey of Covid-19 Stage Alert Systems from March 2020-August 2021.  In prep.  

Gibson, G.C., Javan, E., Ptak, S.E., Ibrahim, O.M., Lachmann, M., Meyers, L.A, Fox, S.J. 2024.  Augmenting phenomenological infectious disease forecast models with epidemiological dynamics improves their performance. In prep.

Prüfer, K....[32]...Ptak, S.E., ...[6]...Pääbo, S. 2012. Bonobo genome compared with the chimpanzee and human genomes.  Nature 486:527-531.

Fischer, A., Prüfer, K., Good, J.M., Halbwax, M., Wiebe, V., André, C., Atencia, R., Mugisha, L., Ptak, S.E., Pääbo, S. 2011. Bonobos fall within the genomic variation of chimpanzees.  PLoS ONE 6(6): e21605.

Ptak, S.E., Enard, W., Wiebe, V., Hellmann, I., Krause, J., Lachmann, M., Pääbo, S. 2009. Linkage disequilibrium extends across putative selected sites in FOXP2. Molecular Biology and Evolution 26(10):2181-2184.

Clark, V.J., Ptak, S.E., Tiemann, I., Qian, Y., Coop, G., Stone, A.C., Przeworski, M., Arnheim, N., Di Rienzo, A. 2007. Combining sperm typing and linkage disequilibrium analyses reveals differences in selective pressures or recombination rates across human populations. Genetics 175: 795–804.

Green, R.E., J. Krause, S.E. Ptak, A.W. Briggs, M.T. Ronan, J.F. Simons, L. Du, M. Egholm, J.M. Rothberg, M. Paunovic, S. Pääbo. 2006. Analysis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA. Nature 444: 330-336.

Hellmann, I., K. Prüfer, H. Ji, M.C. Zody, S. Pääbo, S.E. Ptak. 2005. Why do human diversity levels vary at a megabase scale? Genome Research 15: 1222-1231.

Ptak, S.E., D.A. Hinds, K. Koehler, B. Nickel, N. Patil, D.G. Ballinger, M. Przeworski+, K.A. Frazer+, S. Pääbo+. 2005. Fine-scale recombination patterns differ between chimpanzees and humans. Nature Genetics 37: 429-434.

Ptak, S.E.+, A.D. Roeder+, M. Stephens, Y. Gilad, S. Pääbo and M. Przeworski. 2004. Absence of the TAP2 human recombination hotspot in chimpanzees.  PLoS 2: 849-855.

Ptak, S.E., K. Voelpel, M. Przeworski. 2004. Insights into recombination from patterns of linkage disequilibrium in humans.  Genetics 167: 387-397.

Hellmann, I. I. Ebersberger, S.E. Ptak, S. Pääbo, and M. Przeworski. 2003. A neutral explanation for the correlation of diversity with recombination rates in humans. American Journal of Human Genetics 72: 1527-1535.

Ptak, S.E. and M. Przeworski. 2002. Evidence for population growth in humans is confounded by fine-scale population structure. Trends in Genetics 18: 559-563.

Ptak, S.E. and M. Lachmann. 2002. On the evolution of polygamy: a theoretical examination of the polygamy threshold model. Behavioral Ecology 14:201-211.

Ptak, S.E. and D. Petrov. 2002. How intron splicing affects the insertion and deletion profile in Drosophila melanogaster. Genetics 162: 1233-1244.

Marks, R.W. and S.E. Ptak. 2001. The maintenance of single-locus polymorphism. V. Sex-dependent viabilities. Selection 1: 217-228.