Joachim Messing

Who is Joachim Messing?

Joachim W. Messing is a university professor of Molecular Biology and the fourth director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University.

Since his arrival at Rutgers in 1985, Jo Messing has initiated research activity on computational and structural biology and further emphasis on molecular genetics of the regulation of gene expression and biomolecular interactions. In the eighties, he provided incubator space for two Biotechnology centers at Rutgers, one in Medicine and one in Agriculture. Subsequently, he also founded two new departments at Rutgers and served as the first chair, the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and the Department of Genetics.

Prof Messing is also involved in the Plant Genome Initiative at Rutgers, which has contributed to the sequencing of the maize, sorghum, and the rice genome.