Why is the Waitt Family Foundation contributing to the Genographic Project?


We are contributing $5 million to cover the cost of field research – the backbone of the Genographic project. Primarily, it will enable a consortium of ten distinguished researchers from prestigious institutions around the world to get their operations fully supplied with what they will need, in both personnel and materials, to carry out the DNA field sampling.

How are you supporting the field research?


On the human capital side, we are providing salary and living expenses for the ten researchers, the postdoctoral fellows and laboratory staff who will assist them during the project. Our funding will allow these individuals to travel out into the field and collect the samples from ethnically stable populations in each of their regions, over the five-year period. We are also supplying each center with the tools necessary for analysis, if they don’t already have these tools. That includes robots and machines used in the extraction and sequencing process of the DNA material. Finally, we are enabling the project’s Advisory Board and the Principal Investigators to convene on an annual basis, face-to-face, to review the research protocols and discuss significant findings.

Why did you choose to support this project?


The project’s end goals are very consistent with the charge of our Institute, which is to explore the past in order to address the problems of today and reveal untapped possibilities for the future. In addition, we were drawn to the project because of the people and the organizations involved. We believe this project couldn’t be carried off by any organization besides National Geographic. This is a form of exploration that is new, but it is consistent with what National Geographic does best – tell stories about things and places that most of us do not get to see or experience. With the likes of National Geographic, IBM, and Dr. Spencer Wells and his team of field researchers, the Waitt Institute for Discovery finds itself an important part of a powerful team.

What do you expect we will learn from this project?


By getting out in the field the next five years, Spencer Wells and his impressive team will be able to illustrate the journey of mankind in far more detail than ever before. At the beginning of that journey, humans branched out in many directions, creating cultural, physical, geographical, and philosophical differences that persist today. But by the end of our journey backward through time, we expect we will find that all of humanity came from the same place.

How will the project benefit us – the human race?


Our hope is that by improving the world’s collective understanding of humanity’s shared beginnings and similarities, we can reduce the tendency to emphasize our differences. That is an extremely powerful and positive message, especially given the state of the world today.