Hagler Faculty Fellow Richard A. Dixon Selected As New Fellow Of The Royal Society

Richard A. Dixon, a 2018 Faculty Fellow in Texas A&M University’s Hagler Institute for Advanced Study, is among 50 eminent scientists from the United Kingdom elected as new Fellows of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest existing national scientific academy. The society’s roll of past Fellows includes Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking.

Chartered in 1660 under England’s King Charles II, the Royal Society is a self-governing fellowship composed of the most eminent scientists, engineers and technologists from the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. Fellows as well as Foreign Members are elected for life through a peer-review process based on excellence in science. There are approximately 1,600 Fellows and Foreign Members, including around 80 Nobel Laureates. Each year up to 52 Fellows and up to 10 Foreign Members are elected from a group of around 700 candidates who are proposed by the existing Fellowship. The Royal Society officially announced its 2018 Fellows on May 9.

“Richard Dixon’s selection as a new Fellow of the Royal Society is a well-deserved recognition of his pioneering and impactful research in the molecular engineering of 21st century plant biology,” John Junkins, founding director of the Hagler Institute, said. “He is certainly an international leader and a creative problem solver whose metabolic research in plant biology has vitally important implications for enhancing human health.”

A member of the Hagler Institute’s Class of 2017-18, Dixon is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science at the University of North Texas. Dixon is a world-renowned specialist in the metabolic engineering of plants. As the director of the BioDiscovery Institute, he leads an interdisciplinary research group working to develop a basic understanding of molecular processes that provide bio-based solutions for a sustainable future. He is best known for his research into the biochemistry, molecular biology and metabolic engineering of natural product pathways in plants and their implications for agriculture and human health.

Educated in the United Kingdom, Dixon received a doctorate in botany from the University of Oxford and received postdoctoral training in plant biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. In 2004, the University of Oxford awarded him the Doctor of Science degree for his research achievements. In the United States, Dixon is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas.

As a Hagler Faculty Fellow, Dixon collaborates with faculty and students in Texas A&M’s College of Science.

About the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study: The Hagler Institute for Advanced Study was established in December 2010 by The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents to build on the growing academic reputation of Texas A&M and provide a framework to attract top scholars from throughout the nation and abroad for appointments of up to a year. The selection of Faculty Fellows initiates with faculty nominations of National Academies and Nobel Prize-caliber scholars who align with existing strengths and ambitions of the University. To learn more, visit http://hias.tamu.edu.

About Research at Texas A&M University: As one of the world’s leading research institutions, Texas A&M is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery, including that of science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M represented annual expenditures of more than $905.4 million in fiscal year 2017. Texas A&M ranked in the top 20 of the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development survey (2016), based on expenditures of more than $892.7 million in fiscal year 2016. Texas A&M’s research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting, in many cases, in economic benefits to the state, nation and world. To learn more, visit http://research.tamu.edu.