Discovering New Ancestors

01/30/2026

Registration is now open for the Utah Genealogical Association's DNA Special Interest Group's roster of 2026 presentations — including our "Deep Dive Into Shared Matching" in June!

Find connections to distant ancestral lines by utilizing the entirety of your DNA match list and the matches of your known relations.

Register through the UGA DNA SIG page:
https://academy.ugagenealogy.org/dna-upcoming-webinars/

01/03/2026

Register at: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/qR5TVCpOS2i2Xk33gEEf2g

12/22/2025

What if we told you that our Shared Match Differentiation tool can also proofread cluster diagrams and normalize endogamous populations?

Oh yeah, we thought so… and now that we've piqued your curiosity, you'll have to wait until DNA Day, Saturday April 25, 2026 at 12 noon EDT to get the details.

Register here:
https://gfo.org/learn/special-interest-groups/dna.html

12/22/2025

Our first presentation of the New Year, as the Quinte Branch of the OGS has invited us back for a sequel: if you enjoyed last year's "DNA Basics" don't miss "Intermediate DNA: Strategies for Working With Your Matches" on Jan 17, 2026 at 1:00 PM EST.

Register here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/qR5TVCpOS2i2Xk33gEEf2g #/registrationr

11/27/2025

I very much enjoyed yesterday’s presentation on the Y Chromosome, as the presenter spoke at a technical level above that typically offered to the genealogical community.

Looking forward to next month’s presentation by the Society of Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy…

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sofigg-org_ychromosome-sequencing-figg-activity-7399875158527782912-TXTy

A huge thank you to Dr Thomas Krahn for yesterday’s fascinating webinar on the . We were honoured to have him share his expert knowledge with us — from the history of the Y chromosome to the cutting-edge technologies used in its . See what our participants had to say: 💬...

11/16/2025

We're pleased to announce that Discovering New Ancestors' founder Arun Konanur will present "An Overview of Genealogical Bioinformatics: How it started… How it’s going" as part of the Utah Genealogical Association's Genealogy Pro Talk series in 2026.

Follow the link for more information and to register!

Is your genealogy business draining your energy? Do you feel bad about the state of the administrative side of your business? Are you working nights or weekends when you don’t want to? These are signs that you may not be working sustainably. This webinar will discuss ways to identify areas which w...

10/23/2025

Celebrating the publication of our 2nd patent filing: AASK (Axiomatic Ancestral Stratification by Kinship) is perhaps the most complex of our four filings to date, but that won't stop us from offering to tell you all about it!

Just AASK! 😀

https://ppubs.uspto.gov/external/print/pdfRedirectDownload/20250329416?requestToken=eyJzdWIiOiI3ODQ2ZTg0My00MDVmLTRjNjQtODJlOC02YzkxOWQ1MTJjOTgiLCJ2ZXIiOiJhNWRhNTM5YS0xNTE5LTQ4YzgtOGE4Mi02YWU5YmY5NTJhMTgiLCJleHAiOjB9

10/03/2025

When my previous career (Classical Music) meets my current area of interest:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)00181-1

Begg et al. perform genomic analyses of eight locks of hair attributed to composer Ludwig van Beethoven. They sequence a high-coverage genome, finding strong genetic risk for liver disease that may have been compounded by alcohol and an infection with hepatitis B. An extra-pair paternity event is d....

09/11/2025

From NPR: the ongoing investigation identifying the remains of 9/11 victims.

1,100 people killed on 9/11 in New York City have not had any of their remains identified by authorities. The medical examiner's office is using new technology to identify more people.

07/14/2025

Spending the week at GRIP in Pittsburgh — it’s like summer camp for genealogists!

07/06/2025

Here's a thought, inspired by the recent roll-out of Ancestry's clustering ProTool: each square in the clustering matrix implicitly represents the status of a Shared Match Trio — consisting of the user whose matches are being clustered, and the row/column individuals corresponding to a given square.

This means that our Shared Match Differentiation (SMD) process can be used to “pre-qualify” the row/column combinations of clustered individuals prior to populating each matrix square — something which becomes even more useful when/if users are allowed to adjust the cM parameters of the clustering process itself.

Bioinformatics does it again! 😃

SMD — Shared Match Differentiation: Our patent-pending bioinformatic process.

07/02/2025

Free access to U.S. newspapers at MyHeritage via OldNews.com from July 3 – 5!