What new services will Ancestry.com offer next to the genealogy community? My crystal ball is no better than anyone else's, but I do think a new help wanted ad on the Ancestry.com web site provides a clue. Here is an excerpt from a recent help wanted ad for a new position in Ancestry.com's San Francisco office:
Ancestry.com is seeking an exceptional candidate to join the Ancestry.com team as a Computational Biologist creating and implementing novel algorithms for genomic analysis. We are mounting a major effort to use genomics to shed light on human diversity, origins and relatedness. The successful candidate will join our efforts to develop, test and apply algorithms for defining the genetic markers that define families and shed light on genetic genealogy.
In this position, you will extract robust signals from human SNP data. You will develop and apply state-of-the-art methods to identify statistically significant markers that define regional or ethnic groups. You will develop and evaluate software, using tools such as MATLAB, R, etc. and collaborate with software engineers to generate robust and stable production versions. You will work closely with biologists in analyzing data and members of the product development team.
This position offers an exciting opportunity to apply cutting edge computational approaches to an unprecedented, large-scale set of pedigreed human genome data.
The above is an excerpt. You can read the entire help wanted ad at http://goo.gl/vQ9Z6.
Will we see a new service from Ancestry.com a year or so from now that uses "genomics to shed light on human diversity, origins and relatedness?"
