About

Ripan S. Malhi is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois. He holds additional affiliations as a Professor of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior, as well as with the American Indian Studies Program and the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. His research focuses on various aspects of anthropology, including biological anthropology, archaeology, and sociocultural and linguistic anthropology. Malhi has contributed to studies on the ethical management of human remains, prehistoric settlement in China through ancient DNA analysis, and the investigation of historical diets of lions through dental analysis. His work involves interdisciplinary approaches, combining genomic biology, archaeology, and anthropology to address complex questions about human history and biological diversity.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Biology
• Ecology
• Genetics
• Engineering
• Environmental ethics
• Sociology
• Law
• Public relations
• Zoology
• Bioinformatics
• Computational biology
• History
• Medicine
• Ethnology
• Archaeology
• Geography
• Evolutionary biology
• Engineering ethics
• Demography

Selected publications

• Community partnerships are fundamental to ethical ancient DNA research

  Human Genetics and Genomics Advances · 2023 · 50 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Engineering ethics

  the research, rather than a distraction from the scientific endeavor. If a research team does not have the capacity to meaningfully engage communities, questions must be asked about the value and benefit of their research.

  PublisherDOI

• Dog domestication and the dual dispersal of people and dogs into the Americas

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 216 citations

  • Geography
  • Biology
  • Zoology

  Advances in the isolation and sequencing of ancient DNA have begun to reveal the population histories of both people and dogs. Over the last 10,000 y, the genetic signatures of ancient dog remains have been linked with known human dispersals in regions such as the Arctic and the remote Pacific. It is suspected, however, that this relationship has a much deeper antiquity, and that the tandem movement of people and dogs may have begun soon after the domestication of the dog from a gray wolf ancestor in the late Pleistocene. Here, by comparing population genetic results of humans and dogs from Siberia, Beringia, and North America, we show that there is a close correlation in the movement and divergences of their respective lineages. This evidence places constraints on when and where dog domestication took place. Most significantly, it suggests that dogs were domesticated in Siberia by ∼23,000 y ago, possibly while both people and wolves were isolated during the harsh climate of the Last Glacial Maximum. Dogs then accompanied the first people into the Americas and traveled with them as humans rapidly dispersed into the continent beginning ∼15,000 y ago.

  DOI

• A comparison of proteomic, genomic, and osteological methods of archaeological sex estimation

  Scientific Reports · 2020 · 92 citations

  • Biology
  • Evolutionary biology
  • Computational biology

  Sex estimation of skeletons is fundamental to many archaeological studies. Currently, three approaches are available to estimate sex-osteology, genomics, or proteomics, but little is known about the relative reliability of these methods in applied settings. We present matching osteological, shotgun-genomic, and proteomic data to estimate the sex of 55 individuals, each with an independent radiocarbon date between 2,440 and 100 cal BP, from two ancestral Ohlone sites in Central California. Sex estimation was possible in 100% of this burial sample using proteomics, in 91% using genomics, and in 51% using osteology. Agreement between the methods was high, however conflicts did occur. Genomic sex estimates were 100% consistent with proteomic and osteological estimates when DNA reads were above 100,000 total sequences. However, more than half the samples had DNA read numbers below this threshold, producing high rates of conflict with osteological and proteomic data where nine out of twenty conditional DNA sex estimates conflicted with proteomics. While the DNA signal decreased by an order of magnitude in the older burial samples, there was no decrease in proteomic signal. We conclude that proteomics provides an important complement to osteological and shotgun-genomic sex estimation.

  DOI

• Rights, interests and expectations: Indigenous perspectives on unrestricted access to genomic data

  Nature Reviews Genetics · 2020 · 319 citations

  • Political Science
  • Biology
  • Political Science
  DOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Using paleogenomic data to decipher genomic effects of European Colonization on indigenous North Americans

  NSF · $176k · 2015–2019

• Doctoral Dissertation Research: Investigating human diet and the oral microbiome in ancient and living Pacific Northwest Coast indigenous communities

  NSF · $32k · 2017–2019

• Doctoral Dissertation Research: Genetic impacts of European colonization on ancient and modern Native American populations

  NSF · $31k · 2018–2020

• IBSS-L: Epigenomic Effects of Colonization on Indigenous Populations

  NSF · $860k · 2016–2022

• Collaborative Research: Salmon Stewardship: Mapping a Cultural Keystone and Building Genomics Capacity for Alaska Native Peoples

  NSF · $849k · 2022–2027

Frequent coauthors

• Alida de Flamingh

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  38 shared

• Alfred L. Roca

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  35 shared

• Eske Willerslev

  University of Cambridge

  35 shared

• Kelsey E. Witt

  Clemson University

  32 shared

• David Glenn Smith

  California University of Pennsylvania

  31 shared

• Jerome S. Cybulski

  Western University

  30 shared

• John Lindo

  Emory University

  26 shared

• Alyssa C. Bader

  McGill University

  20 shared

Similar researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Jiawei Hanh-146
• Maria T. Grosse Perdekamph-141
• Gan Zhangh-134
• Jeffrey S. Mooreh-130
• Shuming Nieh-128