Overview
Background
Dr Loic Yengo is a Professor of Statistical Genomics at The University of Queensland (UQ) and Group Leader of the Statistical Genomics Laboratory within UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience. He was awarded a prestigious Snow Medical Research Fellowship in 2024 to dramatically advance the use of genomics to prevent chronic disease such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimer’s, with a particular focus on increasing participation of people with diverse ancestries. After completing a PhD in applied mathematics and statistics at the University of Lille (France) in 2014, he joined UQ in 2016 for postdoctoral training in Quantitative and Statistical Genetics. Loic started his own lab in 2020 to investigate the causes and consequences of genetic variation within and between human populations. His group develops and applies novel statistical methods to analyse large volumes of genomic data. Loic’s research has contributed to improving understanding of the genetic and phenotypic consequences of non-random mating (inbreeding and assortative mating) in human populations and has led to identifying novel genetic variants associated with complex traits and diseases. Loic was named among the top 40 rising stars of research by The Australian newspaper in 2021 and received the UQ Foundation research excellence award the same year. Loic is the 2022 recipient of the Ruth Stephens Gani Medal of the Australian Academy of Science recognizing outstanding contributions to research in human genetics, and was named in Nature Medicine’s 2022 Yearbook among 11 early-career researchers “to watch”.
In 2024, he was the recipient of the American Society of Human Genetics Early Career Award and a Snow Medical Research Foundation Fellowship to accelerate the deployment of genomic risk prediction in the clinic and improve the benefit of genomic medicine in all populations.
Availability
- Professor Loic Yengo is:
- Available for supervision
Qualifications
- Doctor of Philosophy, Université Lille 1 - Sciences et Technologies
Research impacts
The research in the Yengo Lab contributes to the discovery of genes and biological pathways involved in the etiology of multifactorial diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. The ultimate goal of our research is to better understand what genes underlie inter-individual variation in disease susceptibility and help translate that knowledge into new and personalised therapies.
Works
Search Professor Loic Yengo’s works on UQ eSpace
2020
Journal Article
Using prior information from humans to prioritize genes and gene-associated variants for complex traits in livestock
Raymond, Biaty, Yengo, Loic, Costilla, Roy, Schrooten, Chris, Bouwman, Aniek C., Hayes, Ben J., Veerkamp, Roel F. and Visscher, Peter M. (2020). Using prior information from humans to prioritize genes and gene-associated variants for complex traits in livestock. PLoS Genetics , 16 (9) e1008780, 1-20. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1008780
2020
Journal Article
Theoretical and empirical quantification of the accuracy of polygenic scores in ancestry divergent populations
Wang, Ying, Guo, Jing, Ni, Guiyan, Yang, Jian, Visscher, Peter M. and Yengo, Loic (2020). Theoretical and empirical quantification of the accuracy of polygenic scores in ancestry divergent populations. Nature Communications, 11 (1) 3865, 3865. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-17719-y
2020
Journal Article
A unified framework for association and prediction from vertex‐wise grey‐matter structure
Couvy‐Duchesne, Baptiste, Strike, Lachlan T., Zhang, Futao, Holtz, Yan, Zheng, Zhili, Kemper, Kathryn E., Yengo, Loic, Colliot, Olivier, Wright, Margaret J., Wray, Naomi R., Yang, Jian and Visscher, Peter M. (2020). A unified framework for association and prediction from vertex‐wise grey‐matter structure. Human Brain Mapping, 41 (14) hbm.25109, 4062-4076. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25109
2020
Other Outputs
Theoretical and empirical quantification of the accuracy of polygenic scores in ancestry divergent populations
Wang, Ying, Guo, Jing, Ni, Guiyan, Yang, Jian, Visscher, Peter M. and Yengo, Loic (2020). Theoretical and empirical quantification of the accuracy of polygenic scores in ancestry divergent populations. doi: 10.1101/2020.01.14.905927
2019
Journal Article
No evidence for social genetic effects or genetic similarity among friends beyond that due to population stratification: A reappraisal of Domingue et al (2018)
Yengo, Loic, Sidari, Morgan, Verweij, Karin J. H., Visscher, Peter M., Keller, Matthew C. and Zietsch, Brendan P. (2019). No evidence for social genetic effects or genetic similarity among friends beyond that due to population stratification: A reappraisal of Domingue et al (2018). Behavior Genetics, 50 (1), 67-71. doi: 10.1007/s10519-019-09979-2
2019
Journal Article
Improved polygenic prediction by Bayesian multiple regression on summary statistics
Lloyd-Jones, Luke R., Zeng, Jian, Sidorenko, Julia, Yengo, Loïc, Moser, Gerhard, Kemper, Kathryn E., Wang, Huanwei, Zheng, Zhili, Magi, Reedik, Esko, Tõnu, Metspalu, Andres, Wray, Naomi R., Goddard, Michael E., Yang, Jian and Visscher, Peter M. (2019). Improved polygenic prediction by Bayesian multiple regression on summary statistics. Nature Communications, 10 (1) 5086, 1-10. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-12653-0
2019
Journal Article
Genetic correlates of social stratification in Great Britain
Abdellaoui, Abdel, Hugh-Jones, David, Yengo, Loic, Kemper, Kathryn E., Nivard, Michel G., Veul, Laura, Holtz, Yan, Zietsch, Brendan P., Frayling, Timothy M., Wray, Naomi R., Yang, Jian, Verweij, Karin J. H. and Visscher, Peter M. (2019). Genetic correlates of social stratification in Great Britain. Nature Human Behaviour, 3 (12), 1332-1342. doi: 10.1038/s41562-019-0757-5
2019
Journal Article
Extreme inbreeding in a European ancestry sample from the contemporary UK population
Yengo, Loic, Wray, Naomi R. and Visscher, Peter M. (2019). Extreme inbreeding in a European ancestry sample from the contemporary UK population. Nature Communications, 10 (1) 3719, 3719. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-11724-6
2019
Journal Article
Assortative mating in autism spectrum disorder: toward an evidence base from DNA data, but not there yet
Wray, Naomi R. and Yengo, Loic (2019). Assortative mating in autism spectrum disorder: toward an evidence base from DNA data, but not there yet. Biological Psychiatry, 86 (4), 250-252. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2019.06.007
2019
Journal Article
Genome-wide association study of change in fasting glucose over time in 13,807 non-diabetic European ancestry individuals
Liu, Ching-Ti, Merino, Jordi, Rybin, Denis, DiCorpo, Daniel, Benke, Kelly S., Bragg-Gresham, Jennifer L., Canouil, Mickaël, Corre, Tanguy, Grallert, Harald, Isaacs, Aaron, Kutalik, Zoltan, Lahti, Jari, Marullo, Letizia, Marzi, Carola, Rasmussen-Torvik, Laura J., Rocheleau, Ghislain, Rueedi, Rico, Scapoli, Chiara, Verweij, Niek, Vogelzangs, Nicole, Willems, Sara M., Yengo, Loïc, Bakker, Stephan J. L., Beilby, John, Hui, Jennie, Kajantie, Eero, Müller-Nurasyid, Martina, Rathmann, Wolfgang, Balkau, Beverley ... Bouatia-Naji, Nabila (2019). Genome-wide association study of change in fasting glucose over time in 13,807 non-diabetic European ancestry individuals. Scientific Reports, 9 (1) 9439. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-45823-7
2019
Other Outputs
No evidence for social genetic effects or genetic similarity among friends beyond that due to population stratification: a reappraisal of Domingue et al (2018)
Yengo, Loic, Sidari, Morgan, Verweij, Karin J. H., Visscher, Peter M., Keller, Matthew C. and Zietsch, Brendan P. (2019). No evidence for social genetic effects or genetic similarity among friends beyond that due to population stratification: a reappraisal of Domingue et al (2018). doi: 10.1101/643304
2019
Journal Article
Genome-wide association study of medication-use and associated disease in the UK Biobank
Wu, Yeda, Byrne, Enda M., Zheng, Zhili, Kemper, Kathryn E., Yengo, Loic, Mallett, Andrew J., Yang, Jian, Visscher, Peter M. and Wray, Naomi R. (2019). Genome-wide association study of medication-use and associated disease in the UK Biobank. Nature Communications, 10 (1) 1891, 1891. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09572-5
2019
Journal Article
Protein-coding variants implicate novel genes related to lipid homeostasis contributing to body-fat distribution
Justice, Anne E., Karaderi, Tugce, Highland, Heather M., Young, Kristin L., Graff, Mariaelisa, Lu, Yingchang, Turcot, Valerie, Auer, Paul L., Fine, Rebecca S., Guo, Xiuqing, Schurmann, Claudia, Lempradl, Adelheid, Marouli, Eirini, Mahajan, Anubha, Winkler, Thomas W., Locke, Adam E., Medina-Gomez, Carolina, Esko, Tonu, Vedantam, Sailaja, Giri, Ayush, Lo, Ken Sin, Alfred, Tamuno, Mudgal, Poorva, Ng, Maggie C. Y., Heard-Costa, Nancy L., Feitosa, Mary F., Manning, Alisa K., Willems, Sara M., Sivapalaratnam, Suthesh ... McCarthy, Mark (2019). Protein-coding variants implicate novel genes related to lipid homeostasis contributing to body-fat distribution. Nature Genetics, 51 (3), 452-+. doi: 10.1038/s41588-018-0334-2
2019
Other Outputs
Improved polygenic prediction by Bayesian multiple regression on summary statistics
Lloyd-Jones, Luke R., Zeng, Jian, Sidorenko, Julia, Yengo, Loïc, Moser, Gerhard, Kemper, Kathryn E., Wang, Huanwei, Zheng, Zhili, Magi, Reedik, Esko, Tonu, Metspalu, Andres, Wray, Naomi R., Goddard, Michael E., Yang, Jian and Visscher, Peter M. (2019). Improved polygenic prediction by Bayesian multiple regression on summary statistics. doi: 10.1101/522961
2019
Conference Publication
Common genetic variation explains a high proportion of the elevated risk of psychiatric disorders in children of younger mothers
Gratten, Jacob, Yang, Yuanhao, Trzaskowski, Maciej, Kemper, Kathryn, Yengo, Loic, Zheng, Zhili, Zhang, Futao, Zhu, Zhihong, Mcrae, Allan, Yang, Jian, Wray, Naomi and Visscher, Peter (2019). Common genetic variation explains a high proportion of the elevated risk of psychiatric disorders in children of younger mothers. 26th World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics (WCPG), Glasgow, Scotland, 11-15 October, 2018. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier BV. doi: 10.1016/j.euroneuro.2018.08.167
2019
Journal Article
Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for body fat distribution in 694 649 individuals of European ancestry
Pulit, Sara L., Stoneman, Charli, Morris, Andrew P., Wood, Andrew R., Glastonbury, Craig A., Tyrrell, Jessica, Yengo, Loïc, Ferreira, Teresa, Marouli, Eirini, Ji, Yingjie, Yang, Jian, Jones, Samuel, Beaumont, Robin, Croteau-Chonka, Damien C., Winkler, Thomas W., Consortium, Giant, Hattersley, Andrew T., Loos, Ruth J F, Hirschhorn, Joel N., Visscher, Peter M., Frayling, Timothy M., Yaghootkar, Hanieh and Lindgren, Cecilia M. (2019). Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for body fat distribution in 694 649 individuals of European ancestry. Human Molecular Genetics, 28 (1), 166-174. doi: 10.1093/hmg/ddy327
2018
Other Outputs
Genetic analyses of medication-use and implications for precision medicine
Wu, Yeda, Byrne, Enda M., Zheng, Zhili, Kemper, Kathryn E., Yengo, Loic, Mallett, Andrew J., Yang, Jian, Visscher, Peter M. and Wray, Naomi R. (2018). Genetic analyses of medication-use and implications for precision medicine. doi: 10.1101/501049
2018
Journal Article
Assortative mating on complex traits revisited: Double first cousins and the X-chromosome
Yengo, Loic and Visscher, Peter M. (2018). Assortative mating on complex traits revisited: Double first cousins and the X-chromosome. Theoretical Population Biology, 124, 51-60. doi: 10.1016/j.tpb.2018.09.002
2018
Journal Article
Imprint of assortative mating on the human genome
Yengo, Loic, Robinson, Matthew R., Keller, Matthew C., Kemper, Kathryn E., Yang, Yuanhao, Trzaskowski, Maciej, Gratten, Jacob, Turley, Patrick, Cesarini, David, Benjamin, Daniel J., Wray, Naomi R., Goddard, Michael E., Yang, Jian and Visscher, Peter M. (2018). Imprint of assortative mating on the human genome. Nature Human Behaviour, 2 (12), 948-954. doi: 10.1038/s41562-018-0476-3
2018
Journal Article
Erratum: Author Correction: Misestimation of heritability and prediction accuracy of male-pattern baldness (Nature communications (2018) 9 1 (2537))
Yap, Chloe X., Sidorenko, Julia, Marioni, Riccardo E., Yengo, Loic, Wray, Naomi R. and Visscher, Peter M. (2018). Erratum: Author Correction: Misestimation of heritability and prediction accuracy of male-pattern baldness (Nature communications (2018) 9 1 (2537)). Nature communications, 9 (1) 4953, 4953. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-07400-w
Funding
Current funding
Past funding
Supervision
Availability
- Professor Loic Yengo is:
- Available for supervision
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Available projects
-
Genetic and Molecular consequences of non-random mating in humans
Short Project description. This projects aims at utilising genetic and phenotypic data from ~500,000 participants of the UK Biobank to investigate phenotypic and genetic patterns induced by non-random mating in humans. Two forms of non-random mating will be investigated: assortative mating (resemblance between spouses) and inbreeding (mating between relatives). Findings from this project have implications in the analysis and interpretation of genome-wide association studies. The project will involve advanced modelling and statistical analyses of large volumes of data (genotyped and imputed SNP data, whole-exome sequencing, gene-expression, brain-imaging derived-traits).
Candidate. Candidates with a background in quantitative/population genetics, statistics, mathematics and other quantitative fields will be considered. Programming skills (R, python, C/C++) and prior experience in analysing genetic data (e.g. GWAS) is desirable. (Note: if required, lectures on fundamental concepts of quantitative and population genetics can be taken as part of the PhD training).
The Team. The successful candidate will be doing their research within the Program in Complex Traits Genomics (PCTG) Lab co-led by Professors Jian Yang, Naomi Wray and Peter Visscher, who are internationally recognized leaders in the field of complex traits genetics and have been recently listed among the world’s top one per cent most cited researchers of their field. PCTG provides a stimulating and highly interdisciplinary environment for PhD candidates to form and develop their research.
PhD advisor. Dr Loic Yengo is a senior research officer of the Institute of Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, Australia; and the Statistical Genetics Team leader within PCTG. He did his PhD in applied mathematics and is an expert in statistical modelling and analysis of genetic data. His research interests intersect quantitative genetics, genetic epidemiology and sociogenomics.
Expected start. First semester of 2020.
Contact. If you’re interested, please send your CV and cover letter and two references to Dr Loic Yengo: l.yengo@imb.uq.edu.au
URLs
The team PCTG: http://cnsgenomics.com/
PhD advisor: https://scholar.google.fr/citations?user=iv8dxlIAAAAJ&hl=en
Supervision history
Current supervision
-
Doctor Philosophy
Investigating the time and tissue dependent genetic architecture of complex traits
Principal Advisor
Other advisors: Dr Nicole Warrington
-
Doctor Philosophy
Investigating the time and tissue dependent genetic architecture of complex traits
Principal Advisor
Other advisors: Dr Nicole Warrington
-
Doctor Philosophy
Genomic signature of non-random mating in human complex traits
Principal Advisor
-
Doctor Philosophy
Statistical methods and application to analyses genome and trait data from large biobanks
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Dr Kathryn Kemper
-
Doctor Philosophy
Statistical methods and application to analyses genome and trait data from large biobanks
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Dr Kathryn Kemper, Professor Peter Visscher
-
Doctor Philosophy
New approaches to quantify the genetic cause of disease
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Nathan Palpant
Completed supervision
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2024
Doctor Philosophy
Genomic signature of non-random mating in human complex traits
Principal Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Peter Visscher
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2021
Doctor Philosophy
Within and Across Populations Complex Traits and Diseases Prediction Using Summary Statistics from Large-scale Genome-wide Association Studies
Principal Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Peter Visscher
Media
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