The UTSA Faculty Center presents Spencer Wells, Ph.D., as its 2018 Signature Speaker.
Sparking Curiosity: Genetics, Big Data and our Human Story
Join us for a fascinating talk about population genetics and the power of going public with your scholarly work to impact perceptions and change industry.
The lecture will be followed by a Q&A session. The event is free and open to all.
Watch Spencer Wells on The Colbert Report
**All faculty are invited to a Faculty Meet and Greet Lunch with Spencer Wells immediately following the talk in the Denman Room (Student Union 2.01.28). Click the button below to RSVP for the lunch.**
Spencer Wells is a geneticist, anthropologist, author and entrepreneur. For over a decade he was an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society and Director of the Genographic Project, which collected and analyzed DNA samples from hundreds of thousands of people around the world in order to decipher how our ancestors populated the planet, in the process launching the consumer genomics industry. Wells graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Texas at Austin, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and conducted postdoctoral work at Stanford and Oxford. He has appeared in numerous documentary films and is the author of three books, The Journey of Man, Deep Ancestry and Pandora’s Seed. His work has taken him to more than 100 countries, where he has collaborated with everyone from heads of government and Fortune 500 corporations, to tribal chieftains eking out a precarious living in places as remote as Chad, Tajikistan and Papua New Guinea. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he is founder and CEO of consumer genomics startup Insitome, an adjunct Professor at the University of Texas and owner of the iconic blues club Antone’s.