“Plant Breeding Systems Designs”
Dr. Bill Beavis, Professor and GF Sprague Chair for Population Genetics

Bill Beavis. Most often cited for his discovery of bias in estimates of genetic effects, a.k.a. "Beavis Effect", Bill developed and applied novel statistical genetic methods at Pioneer Hi-Bred from 1986-1998.  As CSO at National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 1998 – 2007 Bill provided scientific leadership in building a sustainable non-profit Bioinformatics research institute. In the fall semester of 2007, Bill joined the faculty at Iowa State University as the endowed G.F. Sprague Chair and has served ISU as Interim Director of the Plant Sciences Institute from 2009-2014 and as Director of Graduate Education in Plant Breeding from 2014-2018. 
Bill’s current research interests are on optimization of breeding processes for genetic improvement. Specifically, he and his students collaborate with Systems Engineers to design systematic approaches that translate genetic improvement goals into mathematical objective functions for optimization using tools from Operations Research.  Bill’s teaching interests are in assuring that the next generation of biologists will be prepared to address complex problems with quantitative skills, and his administrative interests are in developing entrepreneurial faculty to transform plant biology from a descriptive to a predictive science and plant breeding from an art to an engineering discipline.