Paul Williams – “The Story of Wisconsin Fast Plants: From the Wisconsin Cabbage Patch into Classrooms Around the World, to the International Space Station and Back”
November 28th, 7pm, 1111 Genetics/Biotechnology Center, 425 Henry Mall
Dr. Williams has been a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1962. He attended the University of British Columbia as an undergraduate and received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Through his research addressing the diseases of cabbages in the state of Wisconsin, was born the idea of developing a rapid cycling plant (Fast Plants(TM)) as a model for research with a wide range of biological and educational applications.
He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978, was made a Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society in 1979 and served as its president in 1989, and received the Eriksson Gold Medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science in 1981. He served as Director of the Center for Biology Education on the Madison campus from 1989-1995 and was named Atwood Distinguished Professor in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1995. He became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1996 and received an honorary D.Sc. from the University of British Columbia in 2001.
Dr. Williams continues to inquire, and learn, and share his curiosity with others. In Paul’s Sandbox, Dr. Williams shares some of his latest research into the natural world and the innovative equipment he designs.