Ted Waitt answers questions about the Waitt Institute
for Discovery’s support of the project
Why is the Waitt Family Foundation
contributing to the Genographic Project?
How are you supporting the field research?
Why did you choose to support this
project?
What do you expect we will learn from
this project?
How will the project benefit us – the
human race?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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