Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association
Interview with Molly Jahn
Molly Jahn is Dean of the UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, which has 2,372 undergraduates, 926 graduate students, 310 faculty members and a budget of more than $188 million. She was appointed Dean in August of 2006. She is also a professor in the College’s Departments of Genetics and Agronomy.
She came to the College from Cornell University, where she was a professor of plant breeding and genetics and plant biology. Jahn has focused her research on breeding new vegetable varieties for use around the world and on gene discovery in crop plants. She has been active internationally, with research efforts in Asia, Africa and Latin America. She has also directed the Public Seed Initiative and the Organic Seed Partnership, an outreach activity based on an alliance of public-sector researchers, seed companies and non-profit groups interested in improving the use of public plant varieties and crop genetic diversity.
