# Pontus Skoglund
**Pontus Skoglund** is a population geneticist who works on ancient DNA, and he is Senior Group Leader of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at the [Francis Crick Institute](https://www.edgepedia.org/francis-crick-institute) in London.[1](https://www.crick.ac.uk/research/find-a-researcher/pontus-skoglund) • [2](https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund-2026/) His group uses ancient DNA and proteins to study evolution in the human past, including fine-scale evolution in human populations over the past few thousand years, the origin and evolution of domestic dogs, and the origin of *Homo sapiens*.[3](https://people.embo.org/profile/pontus-skoglund) He is recognized for computational methods that reconstruct human genetic histories in Europe and Egypt and for mapping disease outbreaks through human history.[2](https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund-2026/)
| Key facts | |
|---|---|
| Position | Senior Group Leader, Ancient Genomics Laboratory, Francis Crick Institute[1](https://www.crick.ac.uk/research/find-a-researcher/pontus-skoglund) • [2](https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund-2026/) |
| Field | Population and evolutionary genetics; ancient DNA of humans and dogs[1](https://www.crick.ac.uk/research/find-a-researcher/pontus-skoglund) • [3](https://people.embo.org/profile/pontus-skoglund) |
| PhD | Evolutionary genetics, Uppsala University, 2013, with Mattias Jakobsson[1](https://www.crick.ac.uk/research/find-a-researcher/pontus-skoglund) |
| Postdoc | David Reich's laboratory, Harvard Medical School[1](https://www.crick.ac.uk/research/find-a-researcher/pontus-skoglund) |
| Signature work | *Reconstructing Prehistoric African Population Structure*, Cell, 2017[4](https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(17)31008-5.pdf) |
| Lab founded | 2018; the first high-throughput ancient DNA laboratory in the UK[1](https://www.crick.ac.uk/research/find-a-researcher/pontus-skoglund) |
| Major grants | ERC Starting grant 2018; ERC Consolidator Grant 2023 of €1.6m+ (CERBEROS)[2](https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund-2026/) • [5](https://www.crick.ac.uk/news-and-reports/2023-11-23_horizon-grant-secured-to-explore-100000-years-of-dog-evolution) |
| Honours | EMBO Young Investigator (2021 cohort, 2022–2026); 2024 Balfour lecture, Genetics Society[2](https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund-2026/) • [6](https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund/) |
## Training and career
Skoglund studied biology at [Umeå University](https://www.edgepedia.org/umea-university) (BSc) and then at [Uppsala University](https://www.edgepedia.org/uppsala-university), where he took an MSc and a PhD in evolutionary genetics in 2013 with [Mattias Jakobsson](https://www.edgepedia.org/mattias-jakobsson).[1](https://www.crick.ac.uk/research/find-a-researcher/pontus-skoglund) • [6](https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund/) His doctoral thesis, *Reconstructing the Human Past using Ancient and Modern Genomes*, developed approaches for retrieving and interpreting large-scale ancient genomic data, with solutions for limited genome coverage, modern-day contamination, temporal differences between samples and post-mortem DNA damage.[7](http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn%3Anbn%3Ase%3Auu%3Adiva-206787) One of its methods removes modern human contamination from ancient sequencing data and was used to reconstruct the complete mitochondrial genome of a contaminated Siberian Neandertal.[7](http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn%3Anbn%3Ase%3Auu%3Adiva-206787)
After a postdoc at Uppsala and a Swedish Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at [Stockholm University](https://www.edgepedia.org/stockholm-university) (2015–2017),[6](https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund/) he moved to Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow in [David Reich](https://www.edgepedia.org/david-reich-geneticist)'s ancient DNA laboratory.[1](https://www.crick.ac.uk/research/find-a-researcher/pontus-skoglund) • [8](https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/node/20) In 2018 he founded the first high-throughput ancient DNA laboratory in the UK at the Francis Crick Institute, which he has led since.[1](https://www.crick.ac.uk/research/find-a-researcher/pontus-skoglund)
## Research
The Skoglund Lab uses ancient DNA and proteins to study evolution in the human past: fine-scale evolution in human populations over the past few thousand years, the origin and evolution of domestic dogs, and the origin of *Homo sapiens*.[3](https://people.embo.org/profile/pontus-skoglund) Its methodological core is statistical modeling of admixture. In the 2017 Cell work the group used qpAdm (statistical method testing modeled ancestry mixtures), a generalization of f4 symmetry statistics, to test one-source, two-source, and three-source admixture models for ancient and present-day African populations against a set of ten non-African outgroups.[4](https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(17)31008-5.pdf)
## Representative work
Reconstructing Prehistoric African Population Structure ([Cell, 2017](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2017.08.049)) quantified how deeply diverged lineages survive on the African continent. It showed that ancient southern-African-related ancestry makes up to 91% of the ancestry of today's Khoe-San groups, and persists at 31% ± 3% in a 1,400-year-old individual from Zanzibar, Tanzania, and at 60% ± 6% and 65% ± 3% in Malawi individuals dated to about 6,100 and 2,500 years before present; the Khoe-San-related lineages found in ancient Malawi and Tanzania are estimated to have diverged at least 20,000 years ago.[4](https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(17)31008-5.pdf)
## Honours and funding
Skoglund received a 2018 ERC Starting grant and a 2018 Wellcome Trust Investigator Award, was named a Vallee Foundation Scholar (his profiles give 2019 and 2020–2024 for the term), and, according to the Skoglund Lab – Ancient Genomics website, joined the EMBO Young Investigator Programme announced in December 2021 (a 2022–2026 term), and was a 2023 Blavatnik Awards UK finalist in Life Sciences.[2](https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund-2026/) • [6](https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund/) In November 2023 he was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant of €1.6m+ for CERBEROS, a five-year project on the evolution of dogs from their gray wolf ancestor and their interaction with changing human societies over the past 100,000 years, funded through UKRI's Horizon guarantee; the 2023 Consolidator round selected 308 researchers from 2,130 candidates.[5](https://www.crick.ac.uk/news-and-reports/2023-11-23_horizon-grant-secured-to-explore-100000-years-of-dog-evolution) • [9](https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2023-11/erc_2023_cog_results_ls.pdf) The Genetics Society awarded him its 2024 Balfour lecture.[2](https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund-2026/)
## Recent developments
Two lines of output define the recent record. First, the 2025 Nature paper *High-resolution genomic history of early medieval Europe* introduced Twigstats, a time-stratified ancestry analysis that improves statistical power by an order of magnitude by focusing on recent coalescences while remaining unbiased by population-specific drift, and applied it to about 1,200 ancient whole genomes from historical-period Europe.[10](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11693606/) In Scandinavia, it documented a major ancestry influx by approximately 800 CE, when a large proportion of [Viking Age](https://www.edgepedia.org/viking-age) individuals carried ancestry from groups related to central Europe not seen in individuals from the early Iron Age.[10](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11693606/) Second, the lab's work led to the isolation of a whole genome from an early Egyptian individual.[2](https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund-2026/)
The dog work sharpened the domestication timeline. The 2026 Nature paper *Genomic history of early dogs in Europe* analyzed 216 canid remains, including 181 from Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Europe, using a genome-wide capture approach that enriched endogenous DNA 10–100-fold and could distinguish dog from wolf ancestry for 141 of the 216 remains.[11](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1038/s41586-026-10112-7) The oldest dog genome recovered comes from a 14,200-year-old dog from the Kesslerloch site in Switzerland, which shares ancestry with later worldwide dogs, and a [Neolithic](https://www.edgepedia.org/neolithic) influx of Southwest Asian ancestry into European dogs was of smaller magnitude than the equivalent influx in humans, suggesting that [Mesolithic](https://www.edgepedia.org/mesolithic) dogs contributed substantially to Neolithic, and probably also to modern, European dogs.[11](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1038/s41586-026-10112-7)
## References
1. Pontus Skoglund | Crick. https://www.crick.ac.uk/research/find-a-researcher/pontus-skoglund
2. Pontus Skoglund | Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists (2026 profile). https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund-2026/
3. Pontus Skoglund, EMBO Communities profile. https://people.embo.org/profile/pontus-skoglund
4. https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(17)31008-5.pdf
5. Horizon grant secured to explore 100,000 years of dog evolution | Crick. https://www.crick.ac.uk/news-and-reports/2023-11-23_horizon-grant-secured-to-explore-100000-years-of-dog-evolution
6. Pontus Skoglund | Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists. https://blavatnikawards.org/honorees/profile/pontus-skoglund/
7. Reconstructing the Human Past using Ancient and Modern Genomes (Uppsala University thesis record). http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn%3Anbn%3Ase%3Auu%3Adiva-206787
8. Pontus Skoglund, David Reich Lab, Harvard Medical School. https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/node/20
9. ERC 2023 Consolidator Grant results list. https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2023-11/erc_2023_cog_results_ls.pdf
10. High-resolution genomic history of early medieval Europe (Nature, 2025). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11693606/
11. Genomic history of early dogs in Europe (Nature, 2026). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1038/s41586-026-10112-7
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Life and health › Life and health scientists › Life scientists › Researchers in genetics, genomics, and genome engineering › Population and evolutionary genetics › Human population and ancient DNA researchers*
*Initially written Sep 21, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 25, 2026; Sep 30, 2026 · Edited: Sep 25, 2026; Sep 30, 2026; Oct 11, 2026; Oct 15, 2026 · Last review: Sep 30, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license