On June 25, Dr. William B. Whitman, professor of the University of Georgia, USA, made an academic visit to Biofuels Institute This visit was officially invited by Dr. Jianzhong Sun and Dr. Weilan Shao. Within one and half day’s visit, Dr. William interviewed the Biofuels Institute and delivered an interesting and very impressive presentation titled as “Genome scale analysis of gene function in archaeon”. A detailed discussion/workshop with the professionals and graduate students in the Institute was conducted consequently for a potential collaboration in some areas both sides are interested in.

Dr. Whitman is an outstanding microbiologist, currently serving as the head of the Department of Microbiology in University of Georgia. He is the fellow of American Academy of Microbiology, and the fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been awarded several famous international awards such as Bergey’s Award. During the past 3 years, he has published about 30 papers in top journals such as Nature and PNAS.