Shai Carmi is a physicist and senior lecturer in The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His primary interests lie in the models and applications of the sharing of long genetic segments in isolated populations; population and medical Jewish genetics; the modeling of ancestry in hybrid populations; and the population genetics of the Druze. He combines his interests in both probability theory and biology. In this fascinating field, scientists use DNA sequences from a large number of individuals to map disease genes and learn about population histories. Shai is working on developing theory and methods for the analysis of shared genomic segments in founder populations. He is also working on the analysis of Ashkenazi Jewish genomes, with applications in medical genetics as well as inference of the past demography of this population.

Before joining the faculty at The Hebrew University Shai conducted postdoctoral research as a Human Frontier Science Program fellow in the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University, hosted by Prof. Itsik Pe’er.  Before going to Columbia University, Shai spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow in the Faculty of Life Sciences at Bar-Ilan University, hosted by Dr. Erez Levanon. His research focused on RNA and DNA editing in mammalian genomes.

Shai completed his PhD in Bar-Ilan University, graduating with distinction. His thesis, “Complex Systems from Communication Networks to Proteins: Statistical Analysis and Modeling”, won the Bar-Ilan Department of Physics Award, as well as the opportunity to be a visiting graduate student in Prof. H. Eugene Stanley’s group at Boston University’s Department of Physics. He also received the Wolf Foundation Award for his PhD research.

Shai’s PhD research focused primarily on the analysis of large-scale networks such as the Internet and protein interaction networks as well as research into transport in random networks: percolation, diffusion, electrical conductance, flow, navigation, and disease spreading.

Shai has made some significant contributions to the field of complex networks. He related the topological properties of the network of interacting proteins to the protein levels and suggested a model of protein complex formation to explain the results, based on physical methods and novel ideas.

Shai received an MSc from Bar-Ilan University. His thesis “Statistical Physics of Complex Networks” was written under the supervision of Prof. Shlomo Havlin. He graduated summa cum laude from Bar-Ilan with a double major in physics and computer science.

Shai has been widely published in a variety of journals, and peer-reviewed articles for Nature and several other publications.