Janet Westpheling Elected President of the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology

Janet Westpheling, a professor of genetics in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia, has been elected president of the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology. The organization was founded in 1949 as the Society for Industrial Microbiology. Headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, the society has about 1,000 individual members and 60 corporate members. It publishes the Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology.

Dr. Westpheling’s research focuses on using functional and structural genomics-based methods, in conjunction with classical genetics and biochemical approaches, to identify novel biocatalytic and metabolic strategies for bioenergy conversion.

Professor Westpheling is a graduate of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, where she majored in microbiology. She earned a Ph.D. at the John Innes Institute in Norwich, England, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.