His collaboration with Colombian scientists on the 2025 study represents the kind of North-South research partnership that is becoming increasingly important in ancient genomics — bringing the sophisticated laboratory and computational infrastructure of well-resourced European institutions into collaboration with the local expertise, institutional access, and community relationships that effective research in Latin America requires.

The Universidad Nacional de Colombia, through Andrea Casas-Vargas and other contributors, provided the essential local dimension of the research.

The Universidad Nacional is Colombia’s largest public university and one of the leading research institutions in Latin America.

Its involvement in a high-profile international ancient genomics study reflects the growing capacity of Colombian science to participate in global research at the frontier of the discipline.

The combination — Senckenberg’s ancient DNA expertise, the Universidad Nacional’s local knowledge and institutional access, and the physical anthropological expertise of José Vicente Rodríguez Cuenca — produced the research framework within which the 2025 findings became possible.