Position:	Research Associate
Overview:	After an education in Prehistoric Archaeology at the university of Ferrara (Italy), Michela fell in love with population genetics, and decided to merge the two investigating the demographic history of populations on the basis of genetic data, mainly through the use of computer simulations. She started working on human data in Ferrara and in Paris, and then moved to Mainz for a PhD mainly focusing on horse domestication, in collaboration with Mark Thomas. After moving another couple of times she arrived at UCL and became part of the Resilience project, under the supervision of Andrea Migliano and Mark Thomas. She is now working on environmental and cultural adaptation in Southeastern Asia.
Email:	m.leonardi@ucl.ac.uk
Office:	020 7679 4397
Projects:	Reconstruction of population dynamics in horses on the basis of ancient and modern mitochondrial DNA, with a special focus on the domestication process. Detection of signals of natural selection in Southeastern Asian human populations, definition of their biological meaning.