Nicolas Ray is Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Environmental Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland. He is also Head of Environmental Modeling and Geoprocessing unit at the Global Resource Information Database (GRID) of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in Geneva.
After a BSc in Biology (1997) and a MSc in Environmental Sciences (1999), he did a PhD (2003) and several postdoc on the modeling of the dispersal and interactions of past human populations. To that end he integrated genetic, environmental, and demographic data in an evolutionary framework. While continuing to collaborate on this subject in several research projects, his academic and UNEP work is now more focusing on understanding how the "deluge" of environmental data that we are facing nowadays can be efficiently accessed, processed and delivered for effective environmental management.
Publication in science and religion
- Ray N. 2013. Les origines de l’humanité: l’apport de la génétique. In "Adam, qui es-tu? Perspectives bibliques et scientifiques sur l’origine de l’Humanité", Edited by L. Jaeger, Editions Excelsis. Pp. 89-109
Recent selected science publications
- Lehmann A, Giuliani G, Mancuso E, Abbaspour KC, Sozen S, Gorgan D, Beel A & Ray N. 2014. Filling the gap between Earth observation and policy making in the Black Sea catchment with enviroGRIDS. Environmental Science and Policy, in press
- Reich D, Patterson N, Campbell D, Tandon A, Mazieres S, Ray N, et al. 2012. Reconstructing native American population history. Nature 488: 370-374
- Giuliani G, Ray N & Lehmann A. 2011. Grid-enabled Spatial Data Infrastructure for environmental sciences: challenges and opportunities. Future Generation Computer Systems 27(3): 292-303
- Ray N & Excoffier L. 2010. A first step toward inferring levels of long distance dispersal during past expansions. Molecular Ecology Resources 10(5): 902-914
- Fagundes N J R, Ray N, Beaumont M, Neuenschwander S, Salzano F M, Bonatto S L & Excoffier L. 2007. Statistical evaluation of alternative models of human evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104: 17614-17619