Student projects

The Globe Institute currently offers the following projects for BSc and MSc students. If you are interested in any of the projects please contact the supervisor directly:

Ancient genomics and proteomics

• Haplogroup assignment from low-coverage sequencing data, find more details here (Supervisor: Thorfinn Sand Korneliussen)
• Dragging DNA from Ivory and Worked Bone (Supervisor: Matthew Collins)
• Ancient DNA and the evolution of the oral microbiome (Supervisor: Hannes Schroeder)
• Identifying parasite DNA from metagenomic datasets (Supervisor: Hannes Schroeder)
• Simulating the effect of demography on natural selection (Supervisor: Shyam Gopalakrishnan)
• Sex determination of cremated archaeological human teeth (Supervisor: Enrico Cappellini)
• Proteomic analysis of palaeosoils (Supervisor: Enrico Cappellini)
• Proteomic analysis of airborne protein residues (Supervisor: Enrico Cappellini)
• Palaeogenomics of lost populations of bowhead whales (Supervisors: Eline Lorenzen)
• Sociocultural inferences from ancient genomes using spatiotemporal simulation (Supervisor: Fernando Racimo)
• Inferring the spatio-temporal distribution of polygenic traits in the past (Supervisor: Fernando Racimo)
• An assessment of population genetic simulators (Supervisor: Fernando Racimo)

Computational Biodiscovery

• Comparative genomics of the microbial unknown coding sequence space (Supervisor: Antonio Fernandez Guerra)
• Biosynthetic Gene Clusters in the unknown coding sequence space (Supervisor: Antonio Fernandez Guerra) 
• Phage discovery from modern and ancient metagenomic samples (Supervisor: Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén)
• Machine learning based prediction of bacterial virus host ranges (Supervisor: Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén)
• Bacteriophage protein function prediction (Supervisor: Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén)
• Identification of phage Anti-CRISPR proteins (Supervisor: Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén)
• Lytic vs lysogenic lifestyle predictions (Supervisor: Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén)
• Feature engineering for machine learning of microbial and viral genomes (Supervisor: Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén)
• Comparative phylogeny of phages and their hosts (Supervisor: Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén)
• Prediction of venom proteins from scorpion, snake, spider and snail NGS data (Supervisor: Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén)

Conservation and biodiversity

• Island biogeography of extinct and extant frugivores of the Caribbean (Supervisor: Bo Dalsgaard)
• Effects of disturbance on the pollination of endangered plants in the Anegada, Caribbean (Supervisor: Bo Dalsgaard)
• Good shit and bad shit – biodiversity in dung in relation to grazing regimes (Supervisor: Jacob Heilmann-Clausen)
• Tree regeneration patterns and biodiversity in the gradient from forest to open land (Supervisor: Jacob Heilmann-Clausen)
• Effects of restored hydrology on biodiversity and habitat structure (Supervisor: Jacob Heilmann-Clausen)
• Citizen science as tool in conservation biology (Supervisor: Jacob Heilmann-Clausen)
• How many species? Estimating total biodiversity of rarely studies groups (Supervisor: Tobias Frøslev)
• Man vs machine: Validating biodiversity patterns from environmental DNA with other methods (Supervisor: Tobias Frøslev)
• Sources of variability in biodiversity assessment with environmental DNA (Supervisor: Tobias Frøslev)

Macroecology and Environmental DNA

• Ancient environmental DNA from sediments (Supervisor: Mikkel Winther Pedersen)
• Reconstructing past plant dynamics using ancient pollen DNA (Supervisor: Ana Prohaska)
• Nectar feeding on Mauritius (Supervisor: Michael Krabbe Borregaard)
• Preservation of DNA on mineral surfaces across time and space (Supervisor: Karina Krarup Sand)
• Tracking vector-borne diseases with (e)DNA-methods (Supervisors: Anna-Sofie Stensgaard and Christina Islas Lynggaard)
• Frugivory and nectar-feeding in the Caribbean (Supervisor: Bo Dalsgaard)
• Apple pollination studies in  Denmark (Supervisor: Bo Dalsgaard)
• Consequences of extinctions of fruit-eating birds, mammals and reptiles in island communities (Supervisors: Julia Heinen and Michael Borregaard)
• Machine learning in forensic analyses of Environmental DNA (Supervisor: Tobias Guldberg Frøslev).
• Soil biodiversity patterns from Environmental DNA (Supervisor: Tobias Guldberg Frøslev)
• Trait-evolution in macrofungi (Supervisor: Jacob Heilmann-Clausen)
• Changes and patterns in fungal biodiversity in Denmark and Europe (Supervisor: Jacob Heilmann-Clausen)
• Fungi and their ecological networks with plants and animals (Supervisor: Jacob Heilmann-Clausen)
• Modelling fossil and sedimentary DNA records to reconstruct megafauna species distributions (Supervisor: Fernando Racimo)

Hologenomics and microbial metagenomics

• Investigating the interaction between the temperature, gut microbiota and animal behaviour (Supervisor: Ostaizka Aizpurua)
• Fecal microbiome transplantation to induce behavioural changes in mice (Supervisor: Ostaizka Aizpurua)
• Global spatial patterns of gut microbiome variability across vertebrates (Supervisor: Antton Alberdi).
• Relationship between the gut microbiome and allometric features of vertebrates (Supervisor: Antton Alberdi)
• Modeling gut microbiome variation across vertebrate phylogeny (Supervisor: Antton Alberdi)
• Recovering ancient microbes from the environment (Supervisor: Antonio Fernandez Guerra)
• New methods for evaluating contamination in metagenome-assembled genomes (Supervisor: 
  Antonio Fernandez Guerra)

Earth System Sciences

• Atmospheric and oceanic O₂ levels through Earth history (Supervisor: Tais Wittchen Dahl)
• Dynamics of Paleozoic climate events and biotic crises (Supervisor: Tais Wittchen Dahl)
• Prospects of Geoengineering as mitigation strategy to combat climate change (Supervisor: Tais Wittchen Dahl)
• Preservation of ancient DNA in arctic marine sediments (Supervisor: Karina Krarup Sand)
• Mineral facilitated evolution of life (Supervisor: Karina Krarup Sand)
• Propagation of antibiotic resistance genes in the environment (Supervisor: Karina Krarup Sand)

Solar System evolution

• Absolute chronology of the first solar system solids (Supervisor: James Connelly)
• Formation and evolution of planetary building blocks (Supervisor: Martin Bizzarro)
• Probing the early habitability of Mars using the oldest planetary minerals (Supervisor: Martin Bizzarro)
• Tracking magmatic processes on asteroids using isotopes (Supervisor: Martin Schiller)
• Isotope fingerprinting of the Cretaceous-Tertiary impact event (Supervisor: Martin Schiller)
• Using non-kinetic isotope effects to reconstruct paleo-environments on Earth (Supervisor: Martin Schiller)
• Exploring Gale crater on Mars with the NASA Curiosity rover (Supervisor: Jens Frydenvang)