The Keller/McQueen Lab

Matt McQueen, me, Dan Howrigan, Christine Garver-Apgar, Matt Simonson

Our lab is interested in finding motivated, quantitatively-minded graduate students or postdocs to work with. As much of our work has become programming intensive, we are also interested in finding students/researchers with computer programming experience - or at least an interest in learning such. If those qualities apply to you and you are shopping for a lab to work in, read on...

Keller’s Interests
One of my principal interests involves testing evolutionary hypotheses about the causes of genetic differences between people. For example, what evolutionary processes led to heritable differences in risk to mental retardation, schizophrenia, or autism? Were the genes that increase homosexuality, heart disease, or extraversion selected for or against in ancestral environments? An estimated 4% of people have a severe mental disorder - what accounts for such high prevalence rates of heritable disorders in modern environments? The exciting thing about these sorts of questions is that they are not just fodder for cocktail parties - available genetic data can help us sort between several well-understood and time-tested evolutionary models. There is a lot of room for students to help shape this nascent field. Here’s a representative publication that sets the groundwork for some of this work.

McQueen’s Interests
My research focuses on a multi-faceted approaches to the investigation of genetic determinants underlying complex disease, with a particular interest in psychiatric, behavioral and neurologic disorders. Recent areas of research include the development and application of statistical and epidemiological methods geared towards large scale genomic analysis in both family-based and population-based samples.

What type of work might graduate students / postdocs do here?
For potential graduate students, if you were admitted to the Behavioral Genetics (BG) area in psychology, you would probably spend a lot of your research time at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics - a world-class research institute affiliated with the psychology department among others. The advantage of this is that you can work with different people on different projects - you aren’t pigeonholed into one particular lab. If you wanted to work in our lab, you could work mostly with McQueen or mostly with Keller or equally with both - it’s entirely up to you. We have a joint lab because much of our work uses similar methods, but you can apply to work with both of us or just one of us in your application.

Obviously we would be most interested in working with students who share some of our interests above. For both of us, it would be great to find students who are eager to learn statistical languages (R, Mx, FBAT, etc.) used in analysis of genetic data. With that said, we should take a step back. We are really just interested in working with talented students on a broad range of projects, from topics in evolutionary psychology and psychiatry to those in behavioral and statistical genetics. The most important issue is: Does our research have a clear question and will our approach further our understanding of that question?

Why should you apply to CU Behavioral Genetics area?

• CU Psychology is consistently ranked within the top 25 of psychology programs. As a consequence, it is highly selective (accepting under 10% of applicants), attracting some of the best and brightest students in psychology.
• Students in the Behavioral Genetics (BG) area will be affiliated with the world-class Institute for Behavioral Genetics, and therefore will have access to large, genetically informative datasets (for example, longitudinal datasets of adopted children or twins). Access to such datasets can make a huge difference in your publication record as a graduate student!
• BG students also have the option of developing skills in sophisticated molecular genetics laboratories and of learning techniques for analyzing such data.
• Most graduate students in psychology at CU receive full financial support.
• Boulder is a fantastic town, not too big and not too small, and often shows up on one of those “best places to live” lists. It has great public transport and a terrific bike-trail system (no problem getting around for those without vehicles). It is also one of the sunniest places in the U.S. (see one of my publications about the effects of weather on mood and cognition).
• Lots to do: skiing, snowmobiling, and snowshoeing in winter; hiking, biking, camping, and rafting in summer/fall.
• The Boulder campus is within walking distance of beautiful Rocky Mountain hiking and biking trails
• And last but not least... you can help us develop the nascent field of evolutionary behavioral genetics and learn about the genetic underpinnings of psychiatric disorders..