
On June 25,
2013, Dr. William B. Whitman, professor of the University of Georgia, USA, made
an academic visit to Biofuels Institute of Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, P. R.
China. This visit was officially invited by Dr. jianzhong Sun and Dr. Weilan
Shao from Biofuels Institute at Jiangsu University. Within one and half day’s
visit, Dr. William toured the biofuels Institute of Jiangsu University and delivered
an interesting and very impressive presentation titled as “Genome scale
analysis of gene function in archaeon”. He also had a detailed discussion/workshop
with the professionals and graduate students in this unit about a potential
collaboration with the Biofuels Institute in some areas both sides are
interested in. Dr. Whitman is an outstanding microbiologist and currently
served as the head of the department of microbiology in University of Georgia,
USA. He was elected as the fellow of American Academy of Microbiology, and the
fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also
awarded several famous international awards such as Bergey’s Award. During the
past 3 years, he published at least 30 papers in top journals such as Nature
and PNAS.