Welcome to my website!

I am looking for a research-focused faculty job or postdoc job (starting from Jan/Feb 2026) now!

I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, where I am working with Kirk Lohmueller (Lohmueller Lab). My research integrates population genetics, empirical human genomics, and biomedical applications.

My research investigates how natural selection shapes human health and disease. I combine evolutionary theory, model-based, statistical and machine-learning computational methods, and genomic, protein structure, transcription and epigenomic data to answer two questions: 1) how natural selection affects human infectious diseases, particularly on how humans adapt to viruses 2) how natural selection affects human chronic diseases. Particularly on natural selection on various non-coding genomic regions and its impact on chronic diseases.

In my previous work, I demonstrated that protein stability is a key mechanism of viral adaptation in human proteins (preprint at bioRxiv, under review at Molecular Biology and Evolution). I estimated the distribution of fitness effects of putatively functional noncoding mutations in human genomes, revealing that top conserved genomic regions only include a small proportion of deleterious mutations (preprint at bioRxiv). I also discovered that Mendelian disease genes show slower recent adaptation, highlighting how a lag in evolutionary response to environmental change may underlie human genetic disease (published in eLife, old model).

Previously, I earned my PhD in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona (thesis), advised by David Enard (Enard Lab) and obtained my bachelor’s degree from Zhejiang University, China, in 2016.

Please feel free to contact me at chenludi6[at]gmail[dot]com for any professional correspondence.