R. Spencer Wells, a 40-year-old geneticist, anthropologist and explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, has been appointed Cornell's latest Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 Professor.

Wells has spent much of his career studying humankind's family tree and closing the gaps in the understanding of human migration. Since 2005, Wells has headed the Genographic Project, which uses DNA samples from around the world to trace how humans populated the planet. The project merges Wells' two areas of interest: biology and history.

The project builds on Wells' 2002 book, "The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey," and a documentary of the same name. In them, he presents the genetic evidence that all humans alive today are descended from a small number of ancestors in Africa. In fact, all men today share the ancestry of their male-specific Y-chromosome with a single man who lived in Africa between 60,000 and 90,000 years ago. Additional genetic data from maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA shows a similar common ancestry of all humans and also provides insights into the evolution of language and culture.

Wells has said that the Rhodes professorship will offer him proximity to a wealth of genomics researchers at Cornell, according to Charles Aquadro, who nominated Wells to the post. Aquadro is the Charles A. Alexander Professor of Biological Sciences and a professor of population genetics. Experts in the field are spread across some 15 departments in four colleges, unified through the Cornell Center for Comparative and Population Genomics. "Intellectually, it was an interesting connection for him," said Aquadro, who co-directs the center.

The author of 41 scientific papers, Wells is also a popular speaker, and students packed his talks when he visited Cornell in April. In addition to sharing his studies into human ancestry and evolution, Wells also is interested in exposing undergraduates to the ethical, legal and social implications of genetic analysis, Aquadro said. "These are issues that I feel strongly all Cornell undergraduates, not just the ones in the biological sciences, should be exposed to."

With a Ph.D. from Harvard University and postdoctoral position at Stanford School of Medicine, Wells spent several years doing field research in Central Asia and the former Soviet republics before becoming director of Oxford University's Population Genetics Research Group of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics.

Rhodes professorships at Cornell are three-year terms (with an option to renew for two years); Rhodes professors visit Ithaca for at least one week during each year that they serve. Aquadro will be the contact for these visits, which are currently being planned.