Population Genetics
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC
PEOPLE
P.I.
Parul Johri
she/her
pjohri[at]unc[dot]edu
Parul is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in the Department of Biology and the Department of Genetics, with an affiliation in the Integrative Program for Biological and Genome Sciences. Before that, she was a postdoc at Arizona State University, advised by Jeffrey D. Jensen, and frequently collaborated with Brian Charlesworth from the University of Edinburgh. She earned her PhD in the Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior program at Indiana University, Bloomington, under the supervision of Michael Lynch. Prior to that, she obtained a Master's in Biology from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Delhi, India.
Postdocs
Sol earned his PhD at NYU, advised by Matthew Rockman, where he worked on understanding the evolution of sex ratios using genetics, ecology, and population genetics. In the Johri Lab he is working on method development to perform joint inference of selection and demography.
Sol Sloat
he/him
solsloat[at]unc[dot]edu
Kendra earned her PhD at the University of Texas, Austin, advised by Justin Havird, and worked on understanding mutational mechanisms and molecular evolution in mitochondria. She is funded by the SPIRE program at UNC. In the Johri Lab, she will be working on understanding the effects of recurrent bottlenecks on genetic variation.
Kendra Zwonitzer
she/her
zwon[at]unc[dot]edu
Graduate students
Austin earned his bachelor’s degree in Genetics from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, where he worked in Vaishali Katju’s laboratory studying the mutation rate and selfish genetic elements of C. elegans. He is co-advised by Dan Schrider in the Department of Genetics. In the Johri Lab, he is working on estimating the distribution of fitness effects of new non-coding mutations and transposable elements.
Austin Daigle
he/him
adaigle[at]email[dot]unc[dot]edu
Post-baccalaureate researchers
Cobi graduated from UNC, Chapel Hill, in Spring 2024 with an undergraduate major in Quantitative Biology. In the Johri Lab, she has been working on simulating populations of Plasmodium falciparum. She'll be pursuing a PhD in Biology at NYU starting in Fall 2026.
Cobi Henry
she/her
cobi[at]email[dot]unc[dot]edu
James graduated from UNC, Chapel Hill, in Spring 2024 with an undergraduate major in Mathematics and Political Science. He joined the Johri Lab in Spring 2025 and is working on modeling human pathogens.
James Crescenzi
he/him
james_crescenzi[at]med[dot]unc[dot]edu
Rotation students
Austin Daigle (January 31 - April 7th, 2023)
Gabriela Almeida (February 5 - April 12th, 2024)
Alumni
Sachin Kaushik (July 2023 - Sep 2024) - Sachin earned his PhD at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, India, advised by Kavita Jain, where he developed theoretical models to explain genetic variation in a changing environment. As a postdoc in the Johri Lab, he developed a diffusion theory framework to model selective sweeps in non-recombining populations. He is now a Senior Data Scientist at Broadridge Financials in Bangalore, India. googlescholar
Jacob Marsh (May 2023 - Oct 2025) - Jacob earned his PhD at the University of Western Australia, Perth, advised by Dave Edwards where he focused on analyzing patterns of linkage disequilibrium in local regions of the genome. As a postdoc in the Johri Lab, he worked on quantifying and modeling the linked effects of selection across the genome. googlescholar