ISFG 2026: Pre-congress workshop • pedsuite

Pedigree analysis and relatedness inference

Date: 18th of August, 2026
Where: Montreal, Canada
Teachers: Magnus Dehli Vigeland & Thore Egeland
Duration: Full day workshop

Description

The study of pedigrees and genetic relatedness is central in forensic genetics. The aim of this course is to introduce the elegant statistical foundations of relatedness, as well as several forensic applications. In certain parts we use R for calculations and visualisations.

In the basic session we focus on pedigrees, relatedness coefficients and LRs for kinship testing. In particular we demonstrate the QuickPed app for creating pedigrees and computing relatedness coefficients: https://magnusdv.shinyapps.io/quickped

In the advanced part we explore recently developed tools for pedigree reconstruction and disaster victim identification (DVI).

The course material is based on the book Pedigree Analysis in R (Vigeland, ’21) and selected papers. Each session will alternate between lectures and hands-on exercises. Detailed solutions for all exercises are provided and discussed as needed.

Attendance in the ‘Basic session’ is not required for the ‘Advanced session’ for experienced participants.

Learning outcome

After completing the course the participants will have knowledge about:

Classical concepts of statistical genetics and relatedness analysis
How to produce informative and beautiful pedigree plots
How to compute coefficients of relatedness
How to perform kinship testing and pedigree reconstruction in R
How to perform disaster victim identification with DIVIANA

Prerequisites

Basic knowledge of genetics and probability
All participants must bring a laptop with administrative rights
A recent version of R (at least v4.2) must be installed on your computer
We strongly recommend running R from RStudio

If you are new to R, here is a short crash course: R-crash-course.pdf.

Schedule

The workshop is run as a full-day course on Tuesday, August 18th 2026, from 8:30 to 18:00.

Morning session – Pedigree analysis: Basic

08:30–09:30 Pedigrees and measures of relatedness (MDV)
09:30–10:30 Exercises I.
10:30–10:45 Coffee break
10:45–11:30 Kinship testing (TE)
11:30–12:15 Exercises II.
12:15–12:30 Summary and discussion

Lunch break 12:30 - 14:00

Afternoon session – Pedigree analysis: Advanced

14:00–15:00 Relatedness inference and pedigree reconstruction (MDV)
15:00–15:45 Exercises III.
15:45–16:00 Coffee break
16:00–17:00 Disaster victim identification (TE)
17:00–17:45 Exercises IV.
17:45–18:00 Summary and discussion

Files needed for exercises: data-isfg26.zip

Solutions to the exercises can be requested by email to magnusdv at gmail dot com.