Dr. Alan Darvill, Ph.D.
Director and Regents Professor
Complex Carbohydrate Research Center
The University of Georgia
Alan Darvill is Regents Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and director of the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, which he founded with Peter Albersheim in 1985. He is also principal investigator of the Department of Energy (DOE)-funded Center for Plant and Microbial Complex Carbohydrates.
Darvill's research focuses on the structure and function of the non-cellulosic polysaccharides of plant primary cell walls, and he has published over 200 refereed research papers.
Darvill was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010 and was the recipient of the Lothar Tresp Outstanding Honors Professor award in 2012 and the Blue Key Service award in 2018. In addition, he served as chairman in 1994-95 of the Carbohydrate Division of the American Chemical Society and was appointed a member in 1993 and chairman in 1996 of the Martin Gibbs Medal Committee of the American Society of Plant Physiologists.
He has served on the editorial boards of Glycobiology and of the Plant Journal for Cell and Molecular Biology and was an editor of the textbook "Essentials of Glycobiology" (3rd edition, 2017). Darvill received the Outstanding Faculty Award of the UGA Chapter of the Golden Key National Honor Society in 1995.
Darvill received his B.S. in plant biology in 1973 from Wolverhampton University (England) and his Ph.D. in plant physiology in 1976 from the Aberystwyth University (Wales).
