rick kittles biography

. Beginning in 1998, as he was completing his Ph.D. at George Washington University, Kittles was hired as an assistant professor of microbiology at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and also named director of the African American Hereditary Prostate Cancer (AAHPC) Study Network at the university's National Human Genome Center. Ghana and Ivory Coast? Goal for these activities: Recognize why using race in biomedical studies can be problematic. [9] On October 7, 2007, he was featured on the American TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes. Where, he wondered, did he and his ancestors fit in? I wanted to make sure the people involved would be attuned to those issues. One of the first decisions he made was to destroy clientsgenetic material after it was analyzed. Kittles, who has since started a company selling . In part because its unearthing sparked controversy among African Americans, and because the find was archaeologically significant, the burial ground got plenty of press. Study guides. If you look at the data, what were doing is actually deconstructing race, Kittles says. Oral history traced the family from New York, where Kittles grew up, to Georgia, where he was born and his grandparents lived. In addition, he discovered, through of a DNA analysis, he descends mainly of people of Dakar, Senegal, and Nigeria's Hausa people. The authors examined ancestry informative markers (AIMs) to estimate the amount of population admixture and control for this heterogeneity for stage and . Its important to have a historical place of origin, he says, and Africa is a huge continentmuch larger than the U.S. Others are looking for an ancestor from a particular African tribe. accuracy and confidence. He then helped. and its Licensors As he began to work toward realizing his ideas, Kittles encountered both excitement and controversy. "Rick A. Kittles," Ohio State University Medical School, http://cancergenetics.med.ohio-state.edu/2749.cfm (March 1, 2005). Add an answer. Feb 25 2023. Scoops about Morehouse College . African descent having helped more than 1,000,000 people re-connect with the roots of their family tree. Kittles discusses why using race in biomedical studies is problematic using examples from U.S. groups which transcend "racial" boundaries and bear the burden of health disparities. Most Temne, his guide told him, live in the area around Lunsar, along the wide Rokel River 70 miles upstream from the Atlantic coast. Kittles says DNA offers a way to reclaim identity. Sampson met with Lunsars 40 elders, all but one of them men, and all Muslim, save one Christian. For another, hes used to scrutiny. Reverend Al Sampson arrived in Lunsar, Sierra Leone, on a sunny December day in 2005. He is of African-American ancestry, and achieved renown in the 1990s for his pioneering work in tracing the ancestry of African Americans via DNA testing. Previous to Ricky's current city of Pasadena, CA, Ricky Kittles lived in Tucson AZ. Rick Kittles, PhD, received a BS in biology from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1989 and a PhD in biological sciences from George Washington University in 1998. Some of the research followed traditional anthropological models: caskets were examined in search of links to traditional African practices, and the scientists learned what they could from dry bones about how these enslaved African Americans had spent their working life. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. When they emerged, they bestowed the name Pa Sorie Kamara. Pa indicates an elder; Kamara associates Sampson with a particular house. Kittless tests offer information about only one ancestor per generation. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Under Kittles leadership, African Ancestry has grown into the leading provider of at-home genetic ancestry tests for people of African descent across the world. He showed them the paperwork hed gotten from African Ancestry, the certificate attesting to his Temne lineage. That bothered me, not knowing more about where in Africa.". Kittles does this using tests that examine two components of the genome that remain essentially unchanged from one generation to the next: mitochondrial DNA, a maternally inherited genetic strand found outside the cell nucleus and separate from other genes; and the Y-chromosome, which passes from father to son. Rick Antonius Kittles is an American biologist specializing in human genetics and a Senior Vice President for Research at the Morehouse School of Medicine. Ebony selected the nation's top 100 African-American "power players . Terms of Use, Jo S(usenbach) Kittinger (1955-) Biography - Writings, Sidelights - Personal, Addresses, Career, Member, Work in Progress, Rick Kittles - Concocted African Ancestry, Rick Kittles - Directed Prostate Cancer Study, Rick Kittles - Callers Jammed Howard Switchboard, Rick Kittles - Attracted Celebrity Customers. 2014-02-22 23:03:14. She went on to start Pik-A-Pak Care Packages as a Stanford University graduate, helping families stay connected with their children while away at school. PIONEERING RESEARCHER: Dr. Rick Kittles is Co-founder and Scientific Director of African Ancestry, Inc. He is of African-American ancestry, and achieved renown in the 1990s for his pioneering work in tracing the ancestry of African Americans via DNA testing. Kittles (.. Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 31, 1994, p. C1. Rick Kittles, PhD Director, Division of Population Genetics, Center for Applied Genetics and Genomic Medicine Professor, Cancer Biology, GIDP Professor, Public Health Professor, Surgery rkittles@email.arizona.edu (520) 626-8003 Room Number: 4948 UA Profile Academic / Professional Bio: Rick Antonius Kittles is an American biologist specializing in human genetics and a Senior Vice President for Research at the Morehouse School of Medicine. Rick Antonius Kittles (born in Sylvania, Georgia, United States) is an American biologist specializing in human genetics. ENTREPRENEURIAL DNA: From a lineage of entrepreneurs, Paige launched her first business at age 8, with a magazine purposed to raise money for an amusement park visit. [1] Ia adalah keturunan Afrika-Amerika , dan terkenal pada tahun 1990-an karena karya rintisannya dalam melacak keturunan Afrika-Amerika melalui tes DNA . Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Eleven million people watched as celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, and Chris Tucker submitted their DNA for the companys analysis. I mean, were talking about a very small part of your DNA, he says, less than 0.01 percent. The thinnest shred of genetic material0.1 percentaccounts for the entire spectrum of human variation; the other 99.9 percent of the genomes 3 billion nucleotides are identical from person to person. [http://www.physanth.org/positions/race.html AAPA Statement on Biological Aspects of Wikipedia, Shomarka Keita Shomarka Omar Sundiata Yahye (S.O.Y.) Career: Various New York and Washington, DC, area high schools, teacher, early 1990s; Howard University, Washington, DC, assistant professor and director of National Human Genome Center African American Hereditary Prostate Cancer Study Network, 1998-2004; African Burial Ground Project, New York City, researcher; African Ancestry, Inc., founding partner (with Gina Paige) and scientific director, 2002; Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, associate professor, 2004. Keita M.D., D.Phil., (May 25, 1954) ne Jon Derryll Walker, is an African American biological anthropologist. Chicago geneticist Rick Kittles stirs controversy and hope with a DNA database designed to help African Americans unearth their roots. For African Americans, its hard to make that African connection, says Reverend Sampson. [11]Kittles is known for his work on prostate cancer but he devotes part of his time to study and research other diseases such as colon and breast cancer, sickle cell anemia, red blood cell immune response, and pulmonary hypertension. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. The path that led to the founding of African Ancestry was complicated and not without controversy, but Kittles found that his research often fed into the deep interest in African-American genealogy that had been awakened by the publication of Alex Haley's book Roots in the 1970s. Morehouse College is reportedly in talks to read more company news. "The Finnish Population Bottlenecks: Exploiting the Evolutionary History of Genes for Population and Genetic Disease Studies." Sampson booked a flight after a chance meeting with a Sierra Leone native who offered to accompany him there. Washington, D.C.: George Washington University. A black geneticist, Dr. Rick Kittles, contacted me and told me about this exciting new scientific development. Beginning in 1998, as he was completing his Ph.D. at George Washington University, Kittles was hired as an assistant professor of microbiology at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and also named director of the African American Hereditary Prostate Cancer (AAHPC) Study Network at the university's National Human Genome Center. Controversy continued to dog himan anonymous letter was submitted to Ohio State's search committee, accusing him of blurring scientific and for-profit workbut it was his strong record as a prostate cancer researcher, not his work with African Ancestry, that interested his new employer. Dr. Rick Kittles,former Director of the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, investigates the genetics of complex diseases that disproportionately impact people of color. "Kittles, Rick [12] Kittles has been an advocate for studying prostate cancer among African Americans for much of his scientific career; his primary concern however, was to find out how genes and the environment increased the risk of prostate cancer. Founded in 2003 by Dr. Rick Kittles and Gina Paige, African Ancestry is the world leader in tracing maternal and paternal lineages of Co-founder and Scientific Director African Ancestry Feb 2003 - Present20 years 1 month Professor and Associate Director for Health Equity City of Hope May 2017 - Aug 20225 years 4 months Duarte, CA. On December 15, 2010, the Center for Genetic Medicine and Science in Society, the University's office for science outreach and public engagement, hosted th. Then she learned other companies traced it elsewhere, to Senegal and Ivory Coast. The idea gained support from a group of Boston ministers who helped organize the program. Kittless job was to isolate DNA from the skeletons and determine whether their origins were African, American Indian, or European. Education: Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, BS, biology, 1989; George Washington University, PhD, biological sciences, 1998. Rick Antonius Kittles (lahir di Sylvania , Georgia , Amerika Serikat ) adalah seorang ahli biologi Amerika yang berspesialisasi dalam genetika manusia dan Wakil Presiden Senior untuk Riset di Morehouse School of Medicine . The whole countryside, he says, is basically without electricity. Yet it was outside of the academic world that Kittles made headlines. In 2003, Dr. Kittles and along with Co-founder Dr. Gina Paige pioneered a new marketplace for Black people looking to know where theyre from in Africa. And Sorie, he explains, means, They snatched you from us and now were snatching you back.. Rick holds a B.S. One siblings results hold true for the others, and parents who swab their cheeks save their children the trouble. "Dr. Rick Kittles Joins MSM as Senior Vice President for Research", "Long way home: Chicago geneticist Rick Kittles stirs controversy and hope with a DNA database designed to help African Americans unearth their roots", "Rick Kittles - Race, Biomedical Research, and the Politics of Trust", "Arizona Health Science Center Appoints Rick Kittles, PhD, Director of New Division of Population Genetics", "Rick Kittles joins City of Hope as director of the Division of Health Equities", "Rick Kittles, PhD | College of Medicine - Tucson", "All Guides: Beyond Blood and Skin: The Global Production and Consequences of Race and Racisms: Rick Kittles", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rick_Kittles&oldid=1138230262, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences alumni, Articles with dead YouTube links from February 2022, Articles with incomplete citations from February 2021, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. He also serves as an associate professor in the Department of Medicine and the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Illinois, Chicago.[8]. Dr. As he was completing his doctoral degree at George Washington University in 1998, Kittles was hired as an assistant professor of microbiology at Washington's Howard University and was named director of the African American Hereditary Prostate Cancer (AAHPC) Study Network at the university's National Human Genome Center. He then helped establish the National Human Genome Center at Howard University. As a second-year graduate student in biology at George Washington University, he began collecting data on mitochondrial DNA, the maternally inherited part of the genome, which passes unchanged from generation to generation. Since he first pondered the databases commercial prospects, hes been part of an intensifying public debate over geneticsrole in genealogy. Web www.africanancestry.com. In the early 1990s he began his career as a teacher in several New York and Washington, D.C. area high schools. Paige has served as speaker, presenter and/or partner to McDonalds, Capital One, The Walt Disney Company, Booz Allen Hamilton, Wells Fargo, The Wall Street Health Forum, New York Times Travel Show, United Healthcare and dozens of community organizations and faith-based entities. City of Hope's translational research and personalized treatment protocols. Its a jump-off point., Some jumps land further than others; African Ancestrys analysis transcends individual families, raising questions about the meaning of race itself. Share to Facebook. His collection of 10,000 samples "to me sounds pretty good," University of Chicago professor Chung-I Wu told the Chicago Tribune (as quoted by the Knight Ridder Tribune News Service). So when Rick Kittles, a young and ambitious geneticist at Howard University, proposed using DNA testing to pinpoint the exact region or tribe of their forebears, hundreds of blacks contacted his . Shes often a go-to resource for African Diaspora communities including the Embassies of Cameroon and Ghana; The Year of Return 2019 event From Jamestown to Jamestown with the NAACP; Back2Africa Festival in Cape Coast and various African tourism authorities and leaders. Sampson decided to take a genetics test after attending a 2004 presentation at Chicagos South Shore Cultural Center given by Paige and African Ancestry cofounder Rick Kittles, then a geneticist at Ohio State University. As one of the only Black geneticists, Dr. Rick Kittles wanted to create a way for Black Americans to trace their roots back to Africa. Currently, he is a professor and founding director of the Division of . Genetics can help us have a more nuanced understanding of how we use that word, not just in the biologial sciences, but in the social sciences and humanities, he says. Dr. Kittles research interests explore DNA, family history, and disease. Black nationalism is the ideology of creating a nation-state for Africans living in the Maafa (a Kiswahili term used to describe t, Kitti's Hog-Nosed Bats (Craseonycteridae), https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/kittles-rick. Contemporary Black Biography. That variation is located within a gene that plays a role in DNA repair, and a malfunction in that process could contribute to cancer development. (February 23, 2023). We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. ." [1] On je afroamerikog porijekla, a poznat je 1990-ih po svom pionirskom radu u praenju porijekla Afroamerikanaca putem DNK testiranja . One of the components that shapes identity, Kittles says, is family history, and for African Americans theres a void. I told them, Five hundred years ago my DNA was removed from here by slave traders and taken to America, so Im coming back for my seat, Sampson recalls. In 2006 he took African Ancestrys Y-chromosome test and was told his DNA matched with Nigerias Ibo people. When you say African American,are you talking about Kenya? (Photo: Bob Demers/UANews) Ever since he can remember, Rick Kittles always wanted to know where he came from. Geneticist Rick Kittles, a professor at Ohio State University, became one of the hottest young scientific researchers in the country in the early 2000s. For 85 percent of African Ancestrys clients, Kittles says, he finds an identical match to an ethnic group in his database, and he tells clients the present-day country or countries where that group resides. Houston Chronicle, February 24, 2005, p. Star-1. Already, he had tried out his ancestry tests on a few subjects, among them his parents. Rick Kittles, Ph.D. Scientific Director, African Ancestry, Inc. This project involved setting up national network of mostly African-American medical scientists who would enroll 100 families with at least four members who were afflicted with prostate cancer; blood samples were subjected to genetic research, with the intent of finding a genetic marker that might explain the high incidence of the disease among African-American men. But that fraction of a percentage of DNA is more than what we had, Kittles says. https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/kittles-rick, "Kittles, Rick He also investigated interactions between melanin and prescription drugs, and between melanin and illicit drugs such as cocaine. Dr. Kittles has published more than 240 research articles in addition to winning numerous awards and accolades. Dr. Rick Kittles is a geneticist and director of the division of health equities at City of Hope, a private hospital, graduate medical school and research center in Duarte, California. When you look at our family history, what gets reinforced is that we were enslaved, he says. These are very different places., Kittles acknowledges that for all its restorative promise, genetic testing has limitations. LEADING GENETICIST: Dr. Kittles is very active in the field of human genetics and genetic anthropology, particularly as it relates to complex disease and health disparities in African Americans. Some of the coverage discussed Kittless genetic analysis of the remains. In the age of DNA screening, centuries-old rumors about plantation owners siring children with their female slaves have become, he says, verifiable fact. Call a family reunion and have everybody put in $10., Kittles takes the criticism seriously, but in stride. [13], Kittles has performed a large amount of research, including publishing over 160 peer-reviewed articles, over his career with much of this work being devoted to issues such as genetic ancestry and health disparities among African Americans and other minority groups. The 25,000 samples hes collected represent 389 ethnic groups from more than 30 countries, most in west and central Africa, where the slave trade was concentrated. Interest in public-health implications would be typical of Kittles's scholarly research. The obstacles in his way were just as sizable as the potential. Like many African Americans, we knew nothing about where in Africa our ancestors were from, he says. Kittles had a few fierce critics within the African-American community as well; charging African Americans a fee to learn about their African origins was "like charging Holocaust victims a fee to confirm their relatives were in fact gassed," University of Maryland anthropologist Fatima Jackson told the on-line magazine Salon. Particularly vocal is Troy Duster, a New York University sociologist who served on the committee advising the Human Genome Project on social and ethical issues and who has called genetic-testing proponents pied pipers of genealogical certainty. If I go to Wisconsin and look in the phone book and see a Kittles, more than likely Im going to be related to that person. Similarly, common lineagesusually more ancient ones, from which others evolved and branched outwardrecur frequently in more than one population. BLS 1003 The Concept of Race. Defining "race" continues to be a nemesis. In 2003 Kittles and his business partner, Dr. Gina Paige, started their company African Ancestry. View Essay - BLS Concept Race.pdf from BLS 1003 at Baruch College, CUNY. That DNA flows through the entire family, Sampson says. Tory Kittles Biography. Thats when the database work began in earnest. So those whose results dont reveal the American Indian, or Zulu, or Mende, or Mandinka lineage that oral histories led them to expect may simply have those ancestors on a still-shrouded branch of the family tree. Anthropologists pored over the caskets, finding signs of ancient African rituals in the toys and tools buried with the dead, the coins placed in their hands. And he was careful to inform potential customers of the method's limitations, pointing out that a person's ancestors over several centuries numbered in the hundreds or thousands, only two of which (one on the father's side, one on the mother's) could be identified by African Ancestry's DNA tests. The Hard Truth About the 65%. He started with scientific literature, compiling African DNA sequences that had already been decoded and digitized. If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. The company was sort of an afterthought, he says. . Kittles took on the role of scientific director. Says Sampson: That resonated., At first sight, Lunsars cinderblock shacks and dirt roads reminded Sampson of the rural Southern towns hed seen as a civil-rights organizer during the 1960sthe kind of place where townspeople gather around a single television in the main store. He is currently Scientific Director of the Washington, D.C.-based African Ancestry Inc., a genetic testing service for determining individuals' African ancestry, which he co-founded with Gina Paige in March 2003 . His company, African Ancestry, Inc., used his expertise in genetic testing to put African Americans, from celebrities to ordinary genealogy buffs, in touch with their roots in a way that Americans of European descent took for granted but that a displaced and enslaved people had mostly only dreamed of. Rick Antonius Kittles (born in Sylvania, Georgia, United States) is an American biologist specializing in human genetics and a Senior Vice President for Research at the Morehouse School of Medicine. Counting backward 350 years, or about 14 generations, to the height of the African slave trade, any one person could have as many as 16,384 ancestors. Following public outcry over the federal governments haphazard excavationand some dismay that the graves had been disturbed at allthe remains were turned over to Howard researchers for more systematic examination. CO-FOUNDER & SCIENTIFIC DIRECTOR, AFRICAN ANCESTRY, INC. INDUSTRY PIONEER, LEADING GENETICIST, ENTREPRENEUR, SPEAKE COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: SENEGAL, NIGERIA TRIBES: MANDINKA AND HAUSA PIONEERING RESEARCHER: Dr. Rick Kittles is Co-founder and Scientific Director of African Ancestry, Inc. Using the companys proprietary African Lineage Database along with close collaboration with historians, anthropologists and linguists, Dr. Kittles safeguards accuracy and integrity in determining African countries of origin and Tribes. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. [http://saxakali.com/Saxakali Wikipedia, Race (classification of human beings) The term race or racial group usually refers to the concept of categorizing humans into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of characteristics. Its like your last name, he says. [http://www.africanancestry.com/] He also serves as an associate professor in the Section of Genetic Medicine of the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago. Journal of Black Studies 1995 26: 1, 36-61 Download Citation. The elders listened. From approximately 1997 until 1999, as a researcher with the New York African Burial Ground Project (NYABGP), a federally funded project in New York City, win which Howard University researchers, led by anthropologist Michael Blakey, exhumed the remains of 408 African Americans from an 18th-century graveyard; Kittles gathered DNA samples from the remains and compared them with samples from a DNA database to determine from where in Africa the individuals buried in the graveyard had come. Kittles's tests also confirmed what researchers had long suspected; around 30 percent of African Americans had European ancestors, primarily due to the rape of slave women by white slaveholders. A single mitochondrial DNA or Y-chromosome test from African Ancestry costs $350; other companies charge between $200 and $900 for genetic screenings.

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