Advisors

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., PhD, is Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Dr. Gates earned his PhD in English Literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Gates is Editor-in-Chief of TheRoot.com, a daily online magazine focusing on issues of interest to the African American community. With Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, he is the co-editor of the eight-volume biographical encyclopedia African American National Biography (Oxford, 2008). Dr. Gates is also the author of Faces of America (New York University Press, 2010), which expands on interviews he conducted for his critically acclaimed PBS documentary series of the same name.

Rick Kittles, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and Institute for Human Genetics at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Dr. Kittles earned his PhD in Biological Sciences from George Washington University in 1998. His first faculty appointment was at Howard University, where he helped establish the National Human Genome Center. Dr. Kittles' scientific interests center on the genetics of hereditary prostate cancer; from 1997 to 2004, Dr. Kittles helped create and coordinate a national cooperative network to study the genetics of this disease in the African American community. He also co-founded African Ancestry, Inc., a private company that provides DNA testing services for tracing African genetic lineages.

Esteban González Burchard, MD, MPH, is Professor of Medicine and Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Burchard earned his MD at Stanford University School of Medicine in 1995. He joined the UCSF faculty in 2001. Dr. Burchard's scientific interests center on identifying genetic risk factors for common diseases and traits in racial/ethnically mixed populations. He created and now directs SAGE (Study of African Americans, Asthma, Genes & Environments). The goal of SAGE is to identify genetic and environmental risk factors for asthma and asthma severity among African American children.

Erica Baker created 23andYou.com, a website dedicated to organizing all the 3rd party tools available to help 23andMe members do more with their 23andMe results. An active participant in the 23andMe community forums, Erica has been a 23andMe customer for over 3 years.
Erica is an avid genealogy researcher and has been researching her family tree since 2004 with the ultimate goal of tracing poorly documented African American branches of her tree back to Africa. In her spare time, Erica works full-time at a large internet company you may have heard of...

Carlos Bustamante, PhD, is Professor of Genetics at Stanford University. Dr. Bustamante earned his PhD in biology, along with an M.A. in statistics, at Harvard University in 2001. His scientific interests center on population genetics with a focus on analyzing genome-wide patterns of variation to address fundamental questions in biology, anthropology, and medicine. His most current research focuses on human population genomics and global health including developing statistical, computational, and genomic resources for enabling trans- and multi-ethnic genome-wide association and medical sequencing studies of common human diseases. Dr. Bustamante is the recipient of numerous awards including a MacArthur Fellows Award.

More on Dr. Carlos Bustamante

Ted W. Love, MD, is Executive Vice President of Research & Development and Technical Operations at Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Previously, he served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Nuvelo, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company. Dr. Love earned a BA in molecular biology from Haverford College and an MD from Yale Medical School. He completed his internal medicine and cardiovascular fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Love serves on the 29-member California Independent Citizen's Oversight Commission, which oversees the $3 billion allocated to stem cell research authorized by California Proposition 71.