University of North Texas 
BioDiscovery and Advanced Environmental Research EXPO 2025
The Biodiscovery Institute and Advanced Environmental Research Institute hosted their first joint Research EXPO on Wednesday, May 14, 2025. The Research EXPO team will be accepted poster and talk submissions to recognize ongoing high-impact, innovative, and educational research by students (undergrad and grad), post-doc, and faculty/staff. The poster/talk networking session served as an opportunity to celebrate our diverse researchers at BDI and AERI, make meaningful connections, and highlight various departments and colleges within BDI and AERI.
Keynote Speaker
Richard A. Dixon is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus in the Department of
Biological Sciences, University of North Texas. He also holds adjunct professorships
at the University of Missouri at Columbia and Oklahoma State University at Stillwater.
He was Distinguished Professor and Samuel Roberts Noble Research Chair, Senior Vice
President and Founding Director of the Plant Biology Division at the Samuel Roberts
Noble Foundation, Ardmore, Oklahoma, where he worked from 1988-2013. He received his
Bachelors’ and Doctoral degrees in Biochemistry and Botany from the University of
Oxford, UK, and postdoctoral training in Plant Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge,
UK. He was awarded the Doctor of Science degree for his research achievements by the
University of Oxford in 2004. His research has centered on the biochemistry, molecular
biology and metabolic engineering of plant natural product pathways and their implications
for agriculture and human health, and the engineering of lignocellulosic biomass for
the improvement of forages and feedstocks for the bioeconomy. He has published over
540 papers and chapters on these and related topics in international journals, which
have been cited over 100,000 times. Professor Dixon is a Fellow of the Royal Society
of London (elected in 2018), Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (elected
in 2007), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (elected
in 2003), Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (elected in 2014), and Fellow
of the American Society of Plant Biologists (elected in 2018) and has been named by
the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the 10 most cited authors in the
plant and animal sciences. He was President of the American Society of Plant Biologists
(2015-16) and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Philosophical Transactions of
the Royal Society B.
