Rick A. Kittles BS '89 (biology) received his Ph.D. in biological sciences from George Washington University in 1998, and his first faculty appointment was at Howard University where he helped establish the National Human Genome Center.

Currently, he is associate professor in the Department of Medicine and the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is at the forefront of developing ancestry-informative genetic markers and how this information can be used to map genes for common traits and disease, especially among African-American populations.

From 1997 to 2004, Kittles helped establish and coordinate a national cooperative network to study the genetics of hereditary prostate cancer in the African-American community. This project, called the AAHPC Study Network, serves as a model for recruitment of African Americans in genetic studies of complex diseases.

Kittles is one of the creators and featured experts in the "Race: Are We So Different?" traveling museum exhibit. He is currently scientific director of the Washington, D.C.- based African-Ancestry Inc., a genetic testing service for determining individuals' African ancestry.