Dr. William Wadlington

Post Doctoral Associate, Horticultural Sciences Department

After growing up in East Tennessee in the Smokey Mountains, Will followed his passion for gardening and interest in the natural world, with a preference for being outdoors and a career in crop improvement. He attended college at Emory & Henry College in Virginia where he majored in Chemistry and Biology and was very active in rafting, caving, and hiking in the Blue Ridge. After college he lived in Blacksburg, Virginia where he worked in a crop science lab, a biotechnology corporation, and eventually earned a Master’s from the Horticulture Department at Virginia Tech. Before moving to Florida, he spent 4 years earning his PhD from the University of Illinois where he applied genomics technology to sequence and analyze the sex chromosomes and complex sex determination systems of spinach. In 2017, he moved to Palm Beach County to continue his career in vegetable research as a lettuce breeder with Germán Sandoya, while also continuing his hobbies of reading, beer brewing, and smoking Smokey Mountain style BBQ.