The University of Chicago

The University of Chicago harbors a large number of researchers who are excellent collaborators and sources of inspiration for the work in the Novembre Lab. We interact most regularly with faculty in the departments of Human Genetics, Ecology and Evolution, Statistics, and the section of Genetic Medicine in the Department of Medicine.

Locally, the Novembre Lab is situated on the fourth floor of the Cummings Life Sciences building, shared with the groups of Jeremy Berg, Anna Di Rienzo, Xin He, Maanasa Raghavan, Matthew Stephens. We run a weekly Mathematical PopGen meeting with the groups of Jeremy Berg and Matthias Steinrucken. Further, with the Berg, He, and Stephens labs we continue the tradition of a long-running Friday morning “super-group” meeting, where we often also have in attendance members of the groups of Andy Dahl, Haky Im, Yang Li, Xuanyao Liu, Lixing Yang, and others.

The Research Computing Center and Center for Research Informatics support our computational efforts by providing access to computing clusters, providing short courses on topics in scientific computing, and staff assistance with technical challenges.

The Biological Sciences Division runs the qBio Quantitative “bootcamp” for incoming graduate students (for which John has become a co-director starting in 2020), and we have a curricular track for computational biology for PhD students in Human Genetics and Genetics, Genomics, and Systems Biology.

Our trainees also benefit from several unique resources and groups such as: GRIT, myChoice, GRADTalk, Hack Arts Lab (HAL) and the Media Arts, Data and Design (MADD) Center, and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Chicago and its surroundings

Working and studying in Chicago provides the opportunity to enjoy the abundance of culture and cuisine in a large city. At the same time, the city sits on the shores of Lake Michigan with nearly continuous public access along its shores including numerous parks, beaches, and marinas.

Some favorite cultural spots and resources:

Some favorite parks and recreational outlets in close reach of the city:

The city sits at the boundary of two major watersheds and was important as a canoe portage point between waters that flow to the Atlantic through the St Lawrence seaway versus those that flow through the Mississippi. As such it was a major region of trade as part of its role in the traditional lands for the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations. Ecologically, the region is a borderland, with marsh, coastal dune, northern hardwood, tall grass prairie, and savannah biomes all represented. Southern Lake Michigan is also a major flyway for migratory birds, and spring and fall migrations are easy to appreciate in the local parks. Aldo Leopold’s classic of nature writing, A Sand County Almanac, was written 3 hours drive north of the city. Here are some destinations we enjoy outside the city: