Rate My Professor Jeffrey Bennetzen

Jeffrey L. Bennetzen is the Norman and Doris Giles Professor of Molecular Biology and Functional Genomics and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia. He earned a B.S. in biology from the University of California, San Diego in 1974 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Washington in 1980. Following a one-year postdoctoral fellowship in a joint project between Washington University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley, Bennetzen served as a research scientist at the International Plant Research Institute in San Carlos, California from 1981 to 1983. He joined Purdue University Department of Biological Sciences in 1983 as an assistant professor, was promoted to full professor in 1991, and appointed H. Edwin Umbarger Distinguished Professor of Genetics in 1999. In 2003, he accepted his current position at the University of Georgia, where he served as interim head of the Department of Genetics from 2009 to 2011 and holds adjunct appointments in Plant Biology and Bioinformatics.

Bennetzen's research centers on plant genome structure and evolution, particularly chromosomal rearrangements and the contributions of transposable elements, as well as the interplay between genome evolution and gene function. His laboratory currently investigates microbe-microbe interactions in plant roots and soil using genetics, genomics, imaging, and microbiomics, alongside genetic diversity in under-utilized crops of the developing world and biomass improvement for biofuels. A pioneer in comparative plant genomics, he identified LTR-retrotransposons as primary drivers of recent plant genome expansions and contractions, helping resolve the C-value paradox, and advocated for sorghum and foxtail millet as model grass genomes. Key publications include "The B73 maize genome: complexity, diversity, and dynamics" (Science, 2009), "The bracteatus pineapple genome and domestication of clonally propagated crops" (Nature Genetics, 2019), and "Polyploid origins, diversification and remarkable subgenome dominance in the world’s largest grasses" (Nature Genetics, 2024). Bennetzen has received major awards such as election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2004), Guggenheim Fellowship (2008), Fulbright Scholar awards (1990 and 2008), American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellowship (2005), Chinese Academy of Sciences 1000 Talents Award (2012), and Stebbins Medal (shared, 2021). He has led significant grants, including an $11.7 million U.S. Department of Energy project on sorghum mycorrhizal associations (2020).