Thea Wilkins

Texas Tech University is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Thea Wilkins to the College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources.  She will begin duties as Professor in the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences in January.  She will hold the Bayer CropScience Regent’s Endowed Professorship in Genomics.

Wilkins received her B.S. in Plant Biology (Summa Cum Laude) from Georgia Southern University.  Her M.S. in Plant Genetics/Breeding is from the University of Georgia.  She earned a Ph.D. in Plant Cell & Molecular Biology from Michigan State University.

Wilkins was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agronomy & Range Science at the University of California-Davis.  She was later promoted to Associate Professor in that department.  While serving as Director of the NSF Cotton Genome Center, she was promoted to Professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at UCD.   She later served as Director of the UCD Cotton Functional Genomics Center.  She currently is Co-Director of the Cotton Functional Genomics Project for the National Institute for Biotechnology & Genetic Engineering in Pakistan and an Adjunct Professor at the Chinese Cotton Research Institute in Anyang, Henan Province, PRC.