The 2026 Outstanding Postdoctoral Fellow Award goes to…Yemko Pryor! The award comes from the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs (OPA) and the University of Michigan Postdoctoral Association (UMPDA), and this year three U-M postdoctoral fellows were honored along with three faculty mentors. For Yemko, the award celebrates a scholar with a decade-long commitment to studying human evolutionary history, promoting student learning and engagement, and connecting her science with the communities around her.
In her current research, Yemko is working with Tina Lasisi, Associate Professor in EEB and Anthropology, on the genetics of human pigmentation. “There's such a long history of exploring and asking questions about pigmentation,” Yemko said. “It's a really interesting trait to focus on because it is something that we can see. It's something that has helped us through history. It is something that has challenged us through our history. Questions like this about human variation are the foundations of anthropology and also of genetics.”
Before coming to U-M, Yemko worked on human adaptations to altitude, creating the first whole methylone dataset for Andean populations. “I just am really interested in this idea of plasticity in populations,” she said. “As humans are responding to environments, we might be able to track part of that in the epigenome, but we also have to look at it from the evolutionary standpoint in the genome. Those two things together will give us more of a rich, contextualized history of what's actually going on and what has historically been going on in the population.”
Yemko’s desire to use genetics to enrich our understanding of history started when she was an undergraduate at Oberlin College, where she double majored in Biology and Africana Studies. She shared, “I chose biology because I loved evolution, and I also loved history, and I realized, these things are the same thing in different fonts.“ Writing a senior thesis that combined the two disciplines was a revelatory experience. “I just never realized that with the tools that I learned to use in class, I could be contributing to new knowledge,” said Yemko. “It felt like a superpower, like I discovered I was a Power Ranger. I thought, wow, this is what I can do, because I've had great professors raise me up and great mentors.”
Among those mentors are Yemko’s parents, both educators who encouraged lifelong learning and growth. Another crucial figure was her doctoral advisor, Dr. John Lindo, who supported her studies on altitude despite his own lack of experience with her methods. “I told him I wanted to take this in an epigenetics direction,” said Yemko.”He said, ‘I have never done any of that before, but if you want to do it, go ahead.’” Lindo, then at Emory and now at UC Berkeley, learned alongside Yemko and was inspired to integrate multiomic methods into his own research.
This fall, Yemko brought all of her skills together to teach the first half of BIO 305: Genetics. She took great care to structure her lectures in a digestible way, and to instill in her students the real point of learning genetics. “If I want them to actually understand how these concepts are applied, I want to be able to show that,” she said. “Otherwise, why are we memorizing this stuff? Just for an exam? No, we're doing it because it's cool. It's cool because it teaches us things. Once we have some grasp on these tools, we can use them to teach us more things, and that's whatI think is amazing. We learn these tools and we generate more knowledge from them. That's really unique to the human experience.”
Yemko is equally concerned with making a difference outside of the classroom. “When I came to Michigan, I really wanted to find ways to get involved not only in the school but also the community,” she said. Yemko discovered the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County, completed their volunteer training, and began working with them on a cemetery restoration project. “Getting to know a community through talking to and meeting with people who still have memories of when this cemetery was functioning, or who have found headstones of relatives, has been an amazing experience,” she said. “ I feel immersed in the cultures in Washtenaw County because I showed up in these volunteer places, and have been able to record stories and speak to people about some of their experiences.”
With her combination of scientific ingenuity, pedagogical passion, and community commitment, it’s easy to see why Yemko is 2026’s Outstanding Postdoc. In all of her success, Yemko remains committed to creating opportunities for others. “I like to pay it forward,” she said. “That's just what I've been taught.”
