Lommel to Lead Ag Research Service

Steven Lommel has been named associate dean and director for the N.C. Agricultural Research Service, effective Sept. 1.

Lommel, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of plant pathology, currently serves as interim president of the David H. Murdock Research Institute in Kannapolis and assistant vice chancellor for research.

His research involves studying the structure of small plant viruses, with the goal of using them as viral-based nanotechnology cargo vehicles. His teaching responsibilities include graduate courses in plant pathology and plant virology, as well as invited lectures in biotechnology and genetics. He is editor for the Journal of Virology and sits on editorial boards of several other plant biology and virology journals. In 2012, he was named a Food Systems Leadership Institute Fellow.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of San Francisco and his master’s and doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.