Ronald L. Phillips

Ronald L. Phillips (born 1940) is an American biologist and a Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota.

Birth and education

Ronald L. Phillips was born in 1940 in the United States. He completed his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Purdue University. After completing his master's degree, he completed his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.

Academic career

After completing his PhD, he completed his postdoctoral training at Cornell University. Since 1967, he has been a professor at the University of Minnesota. Officially retiring in 2010, he is now Regents Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota.

Research

Ronald L. Phillips was the first to generate whole corn plants from cells grown in culture, which laid the foundation for, and sparked, a new industry, using cell-culture methods to genetically modify corn plants and other cereals. The corn cell line which is most widely used for genetic modification of corn has greatly accelerated the improvement of corn, as food, feed and fuel.

His research program at the University of Minnesota was one of the early programs in modern plant biotechnology related to agriculture. Research in the Phillips laboratory have further led to the identification of cells and plants with increased levels of essential amino acids and the development of an efficient DNA sequence mapping system used by plant scientists in genomics research.

In 2006/7, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture along with Michel A. J. Georges of the University of Liège "for groundbreaking discoveries in genetics and genomics, laying the foundations for improvements in crop and livestock breeding, and sparking important advances in plant and animal sciences".

In 2010 Phillips received the ISA Medal for Science from the University of Bologna and the Siehl Prize from the University of Minnesota.