GHIST 2026 will open on June 1, 2026. Register ahead of time at the Synapse site. This year's challenges will include demographic history, selective sweep, and genealogical relationship inference challenges.
The paper on GHIST 2024 was recently published in Molecular Biology and Evolution.
If you're new to population genetics inference, our web apps for inferring bottleneck demographic histories and detecting sweeps might be useful. They generate files ready to submit to the GHIST challenges.
To be notified of GHIST activities subscribe to our mailing list.
In population genomics, there are a dizzying array of potential data analysis approaches to infer population history, aspects of natural selection, or other evolutionary properties from data. Although methods developers try to evaluate their approaches, those evaluations can be unconsciously biased or may not reflect the experiences of real-world users. GHIST is an annual forum in which the community can test inference approaches in an unbiased fashion. Each year, the GHIST organizers release simulated population genomic data sets and host a competition to infer various aspects of the processes that generated those data. From the competitors’ solutions, the community will learn what approaches perform well or poorly in particular circumstances. Participating the competition is also great training for new students and researchers!
GHIST 2025
The competition consisted of five demographic history inference challenges and four selective sweep detection challenges (developed by Andy Kern's group). To avoid metagaming, all competitions included test data (unlimited submission) and final data (single submission). We had roughly 60 registered participants, and the paper is currently being drafted, with top competitors offered co-authorship. To see details, visit the Synapse site.
GHIST 2024
The competition consisted of four demographic history inference challenges of varied expected difficulty. For each challenge, we provided a VCF file with genomic data, and competitors submitted a simple text file with their inferences. We had roughly 60 registered participants, with 47 submissions to the simplest challenge and 12 to the most complex. The top competitors are co-authors on the paper describing the competition.
To see the 2024 competition, visit its Synapse site. The learn about the results, read the paper, or watch my talk at ProbGen.
The Design Committee for the 2024 competition was Katie Lotterhos, Andrés Moreno-Estrada, and Adam Siepel.
Frequently Asked Questions
The preferred pronunciation is gIst.
No! You can use whatever approach you like. In fact, the greater the variety of approaches used, the more we'll learn.
Questions? Contact Ryan Gutenkunst at rgutenk@arizona.edu.
This competition is supported by NIH NIGMS grant R35 GM149235 to Ryan Gutenkunst.