In February 2008 he appeared in part 4 of African American Lives 2. Rick Antonius Kittles (born in Sylvania, Georgia, United States ) is an American biologist specializing in human genetics. 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. 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. 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. Kittless job was to isolate DNA from the skeletons and determine whether their origins were African, American Indian, or European. [14] Kittles has also been a part of many cutting edge developments including the progress of genetic markers and how an individuals ancestry can be used to help identify risk of disease and health outcomes. Now for the first time in three centuries, Gates says, we can begin to reverse the Middle Passage. In 2006 he featured African Ancestry in African American Lives, a PBS documentary on black Americanssearch for their roots. Customers could choose to have either the paternal line (though the Y chromosome, the genetic marker responsible for the development of male characteristics) or the maternal line (through mitochondrial DNA) investigated; a discount was available for the pair. Kittles, who has since started a company selling . In July 2007 he told Englands Observer Magazine, There is a cultural feeling that DNA evidence is sacrosanct. Rick Antonius Kittles was born in 1976(?) One of the components that shapes identity, Kittles says, is family history, and for African Americans theres a void. PIONEERING RESEARCHER: Dr. Rick Kittles is Co-founder and Scientific Director of African Ancestry, Inc. Currently, he is a professor and founding director of the Division of . Kittles himself found German ancestry on his father's side and identified a Portuguese forbear in Paige's background, and he observed that his own research, as well as other work showing the frequency of African ancestry among Europeans and European Americans, further weakened the idea of race as a scientific category. //]]>. Rick Kittles Biography (2).pdf - Course Hero "Rick A. Kittles," Ohio State University Medical School, http://cancergenetics.med.ohio-state.edu/2749.cfm (March 1, 2005). When word of his efforts leaked out, Howard found its switchboard jammed with calls from reporters and from ordinary African Americans who wanted to know how they could sign up to be tested. 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. Born 1976(?) When he was young he hoped to become a rap musician, but he was curious from the start about human origins and differences. In 2003, Dr. Rick Kittles and Dr. Gina Paige collaborated on a groundbreaking way to help Black people reconnect to their roots beyond the limits of their current family trees. Early years [ edit] 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. He then helped establish the National Human Genome Center at Howard University. Kittles also starred opposite Josh Holloway and Sarah Wayne Callies in the action-drama series, "Colony", and was seen in Dee Rees' HBO Emmy-winning film, "Bessie", with Queen Latifah. Yet it was outside of the academic world that Kittles made headlines. "I was always the only black kid in the class. Kittles and his associates hoped that a project carried out mostly by African American researchers might break down these walls of mistrust. September 2, 2007. He also became codirector of the molecular-genetics unit at the universitys National Human Genome Center. Rick Antonius Kittles is an American biologist specializing in human genetics and a Senior Vice President for Research at the Morehouse School of Medicine. 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. Contemporary Black Biography. Retrieved February 23, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/kittles-rick. 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. Its important to have a historical place of origin, he says, and Africa is a huge continentmuch larger than the U.S. If you look at the data, what were doing is actually deconstructing race, Kittles says. 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. Race and Racism in Medicine | Ecology of Health and Medicine Web www.africanancestry.com. 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). 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. 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. 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. Geneticist Rick Kittles, a professor at Ohio State University, became one of the hottest young scientific researchers in the country in the early 2000s. South Africa? 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. 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. Kittles took on the role of scientific director. The elders listened. Genes Don't Cause Racial-Health Disparities, Society Does The Massachusetts-born preacher, who had grown up in Boston and spent the bulk of his career behind the pulpit of Fernwood United Methodist Church on Chicagos South Side, would be coming home to a place he had never been. He was looking for prominent African Americans to be guinea pigs, and unbeknownst to him, I had been interested more than interested, obsessed with my own family tree since I was 9 years old. Reverend Al Sampson arrived in Lunsar, Sierra Leone, on a sunny December day in 2005. Rick holds a B.S. As a pilot project, they began to gather genetic material from Boston-area school children. Rick Kittles - bahasa.wiki Rick Kittles - Senior Vice President for Research - LinkedIn 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. 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. Thats mainly because of the behavior of slaveholders during slavery, Kittles says. He has previously held positions at Howard University (19982004), Ohio State University (20042006), the University of Chicago (20062010), the University of Illinois Chicago (20102014), the University of Arizona (20142017), and the City of Hope National Medical Center (20172022). Defining "race" continues to be a nemesis. . From rough-etched bones, scientists constructed stories of hunger and backbreaking labor. Rick Kittles - wikinone.com Through DNA testing, he discovered he's a descendant of the Mende people of Sierra Leone. Contemporary Black biography. Volume 51 - Internet Archive The Hard Truth About the 65% - African Ancestry Mixed Race Studies Rick A. Kittles For another, hes used to scrutiny. He grew up in Central Islip, New York. They know their ancestors were from Africa, but they cant get past South Carolina or Mississippi. For Sampson, this is especially true: adopted and raised by his maternal uncle, he met his mother only three times and knew nothing about his fathers family. Seattle Times, May 30, 2000, p. A1; April 25, 2003, p. A7. African Ancestry determines specific countries and "I used to always wonder in school why everybody looks different," Kittles told Alice Thomas of the Columbus Dispatch. 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. Where did rick kittles go to school? - Answers Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. [1] 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. African Ancestry continued to grow and to gain national attention; an article on the company appeared in People in the fall of 2004. Case Study: Rick Kittles - Golden Helix 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: For African Americans, its hard to make that African connection, says Reverend Sampson. People are riveted by the possibility that they can find the tribe theyre descended from, says Harvard University African Americanstudies professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., but the Middle Passage prevented us from really finding out. Between the western shore of Africa and the eastern shore of America, names, identities, and religions vanished. But there the trail ended. Kittles, who joined Chicagos faculty in 2006, hardly imagined any scene like Sampsons Lunsar homecoming when he began constructing the DNA database that would become the foundation of African Ancestry. Its like your last name, he says. [http://medicine.uchicago.edu/faculty_profile/faculty_profile.asp?empl_id=9960]. Sometimes Ricky goes by various nicknames including Ricky A Kittles, Ricahrd Kittles, Richard Kittles, Richard A Kittles and Anthony Kittles. 1998. Dr. For his original DNA research and analysis restoring the African ethnic and national identities of descendants of enslaved Africans living in the Diaspora, Dr. Kittles deserves honors and recognition. Others are looking for an ancestor from a particular African tribe. But a kind of false precision is rampant right now. Cautioning consumers against any headlong plunge into genetic ancestry testing, an article in the October 19 Sciencecoauthored by 14 anthropologists, sociologists (including Duster), bioethicists, and legal scholarssummed up the skepticscase. More distinctive lineages are restricted to particular regions and groups. Most tests, they wrote, can trace only a few ancestors out of thousands and likely wont identify every place or group that matches a clients genetic profile. "The Finnish Population Bottlenecks: Exploiting the Evolutionary History of Genes for Population and Genetic Disease Studies." Scoops about Morehouse College .