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Willard named head of MSU department
MISSISSIPPI STATE -- Scott Willard has been named head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Mississippi State University.
He will assume this position May 1, although he has held it in interim status for a year. Since 1999, he has been in MSU’s Department of Animal and Dairy Science as a professor of reproductive and environmental physiology.
Willard earned a bachelor’s degree in animal, veterinary and fisheries science at the University of Rhode Island, Kingston. He earned a master’s and doctoral degree in physiology of reproduction at Texas A&M University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cell biology and anatomy at the Medical University of South Carolina before coming to MSU.
He has more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and 140 meeting abstracts to his credit. In addition, he co-authored a textbook in 2003 on applied animal reproduction.
As head of MSU’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Willard will be responsible for the day-to-day functioning of the department and developing research and teaching initiatives in this area along with the biochemistry and molecular biology faculty.
“Biochemistry and molecular biology is at the core of all of the life sciences,” Willard said. “The research conducted in the department touches all of our daily lives, from advances in food and fiber technologies to biofuels to the development of new pharmaceutical compounds.”
Departmental faculty have been successful in research and granting efforts with funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy supporting faculty research aims.
The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has eight research and teaching faculty, 23 graduate students, of which 21 are doctoral students, and a spring 2008 undergraduate enrollment of 73.
“We anticipate a significant increase in our undergraduate enrollment in the fall of 2008,” Willard said. “Last year, we branched out to let students know what the department has to offer and the value of a degree in biochemistry and molecular biology.
“I see this as a great opportunity to grow the department over the next few years and establish more extensive relationships with other departments on campus as well as affiliated regional institutions in our discipline,” he said.
Contact: Dr. Scott Willard (662) 325- 7736
