Stephan Schiffels

Dr. Stephan Schiffels is a Research Group Leader in the Department of Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany. He leads the Population Genetics group and holds a W2 Max Planck Research Group Leader position since October 2021. Previously, he was a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena from 2015 to 2020. His work focuses on reconstructing human history through genetic data, developing computational methods for analyzing ancient and modern genomes, and studying population dynamics in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Education: Physics studies at the University of Cologne (PhD 2012). Postdoctoral fellowship at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (2012–2015). Awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2019 for the MICROSCOPE project, investigating European Iron Age genetics and rare variation-based methods.

Research interests include ancient DNA analysis, computational genetics, human migration patterns, and population history reconstruction. Notable contributions include studies on Anglo-Saxon migration, Iron Age genetics, and malaria pathogen evolution. He co-leads the Poseidon project for ancient DNA data management and collaborates on global archaeogenetic initiatives.

Key awards: ERC Starting Grant (2019). Active in ethics discussions around human remains research and community-centered science practices.