Spencer Wells
Spencer Wells (born April 6 1969 in Georgia, USA) is a geneticist and anthropologist, and an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. He leads The Genographic Project.
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Education
Wells started college at age 16.
- B.S., Biology, University of Texas at Austin, 1988
- Ph.D., Biology, Harvard University, 1994
- Postdoctoral fellow, Stanford University, 1994-1998
- Research fellow, Oxford University, 1999-2000
Work
Wells did his Ph.D. work under Richard Lewontin, and later did postdoctoral research with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Sir Walter Bodmer. His work, which has helped to establish the critical role played by Central Asia in the peopling of the world, has been published in journals such as Science, The American Journal of Human Genetics, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
He wrote the acclaimed book (2002), which explains how genetic data has been used to trace human migrations over the past 50,000 years, when modern humans first migrated outside of Africa. According to Wells, one group took a southern route and populated southern India and southeast Asia, then Melanesia, Micronesia and Australia. The other group, accounting for 90% of the world's non-African populace, took a northern route, eventually populating most of Eurasia (including much of South Asia and largely displacing the aboriginals of Southeast Asia in the process), North Africa and the Americas. Wells also wrote and presented the PBS/National Geographic documentary of the same name.
Since 2005, Wells has headed The Genographic Project, undertaken by the National Geographic Society, IBM and The Waitt Family Foundation, which will add to our knowledge of human history by analyzing DNA samples from around the world, thereby creating a picture of how our ancestors populated the planet.
Awards
- National Merit Scholar
- Phi Beta Kappa
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellowship
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship
- Fellow of the Explorers Club
See also
External links
Categories
1969 births | Living people | Population geneticists | American geneticists | University of Texas at Austin alumni | Harvard University alumni