Humans are found everywhere on Earth. Yet how did we get here? Why do we look the way we do? IBM and National Geographic are mounting the Genographic Project, an ambitious attempt to answer these fundamental questions. Kris Lichter talks about the how a worldwide, decentralized group of scientists collaborates on the largest DNA sample database ever assembled to understand the story of the human race.

The fossil record fixes human origins in Africa, but little is known about the great journey that took Homo sapiens to the far reaches of the Earth. Forget about finding a great-great-great-great-grandfather: genetic evidence suggests that all humans alive today can be traced back to a small tribe of hunter-gatherers who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago. The story is written in our DNA, and anyone can take part in the project with a public participation kit. Our genes allow us to chart the ancient human migrations from Africa across the continents. Through one path, we can see living evidence of an ancient African trek, through India, to populate even isolated Australia.

The project has research laboratories and field workers distributed around the world, spanning both scientific disciplines and national borders. Kris discusses IBM's role in enabling a collaboration of this magnitude, and the value to the world it represents.

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Kris Lichter is IBM's project executive for the Genographic Project. Kris has an extensive background in developing and leading some of IBM's most complex alliances in the areas of life sciences and emerging technologies. He has been a manager of IBM's life sciences alliances team for the last three years, and has also managed business development and marketing programs in IBM's software group organization. In addition to his work at IBM, Kris was also a director of operations at Internet Capital Group (ICG), a director of Palm Ventures, Palm Computing's venture capital arm, and a business development team member at America Online (AOL).

Resources:

• The Genographic Project at IBM.
• National Geographic
• Spencer Wells earlier presenation on ITC.

This program is from the Supernova 2005 series.

For Team ITC:

• Series producer: Jim Alateras
• Post-production audio engineer: Paul Figgiani
• Description editor: Jonathan Flynn