Ray is an ARC DECRA fellow whose central interest lies in understanding how evolutionary processes have shaped the remarkable biological diversity observed in humans and other species. In his previous work, Ray has used population genetic datasets to explore how fruit flies adapt to novel thermal environments and to reconstruct the historical human migrations during the initial peopling of modern Indonesia, Australia, and New Guinea. His move to the ECDI is motivated by a desire to achieve a fuller understanding of human evolutionary history by situating genetic analyses within the rich sociocultural context provided by world leading experts in archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics.

Active projects include working with Indigenous groups across Australia, New Guinea, and Island South East Asia to build a detailed understanding of the human population history of these regions – including the original settlement and subsequent movements and interactions. An emerging focus involves leveraging large genomic datasets to investigate how historical evolutionary processes, including adaptation, have shaped modern human disease, and exploring the potential of evolutionary genetic knowledge in the development of novel medical treatments (i.e. evolutionary medicine).