Her genome fills in a really important missing piece of the overall story of how humans got to the Americas. A lot of work has been focused on the other branch of Native Americans' ancestry -- the Siberians -- but not much was known until this paper about the East Asian ancestors of Native Americans '. It's really important to understand this branch, as it accounts for the majority of Native American ancestry !

Jennifer Raff

Jennifer Anne Raff (born 1979, née Kedzie) is an American geneticist and an assistant professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. She specializes in anthropological genetics relating to the initial peopling of the Americas and subsequent prehistory of Indigenous populations throughout North America. She is the President of the American Association of Anthropological Genetics. Alongside her research, Raff is a science communicator who writes and gives public talks about topics in science literacy.

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