The primary goal of this research proposal is to understand how adaptive selection has shaped the genetic and phenotypic variation in present day human populations using genomic data. For that, we propose first to: (i) compile genome-wide data across several populations to analyze the footprints of positive (adaptive) selection by considering different modes of selection (hard and soft sweeps and polygenic selection) and second (ii) try to understand the biology behind the detected selection signals by using in silico functional predictions, molecular biology techniques and different association approaches to locate and experimentally validate any putative adaptive functional (coding and non-coding) variant, determine their corresponding adaptive phenotypes and try to identify the environmental selective pressures at play.