Professor Paul Gepts holds a Ir. Agron. (Plant Protection) degree from the Faculté Universitaire des Sciences Agronomiques, Gembloux, Belgium (1976), a Ph.D. in Plant Breeding and Genetics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1984), and a post-doctoral fellowhip from the University of California, Riverside (1987). Since 1987, he is on the faculty at the University of California, Davis. He was chair of the Department of Agronomy and Range Science from 1999 to 2001. His main research and teaching focus is on the evolution of crop plants and the origin of crop plants, with particular focus on Phaseolus beans, cowpea, teosinte, and Capsicum peppers. He has combined field work in Latin America, especially to collect wild relatives, with genomic analyses of genetic diversity, to elucidate the factors that shape genetic diversity in these crops, including gene flow. He has collaborated with Mexican scientists to investigate the spread of transgenes in maize germplasm. More recently, he has initiated collaborations with African bean breeders to enhance their capability of marker-assisted selection. His results have been used by bean breeders to improve the efficiency of varietal development and have been recognized by the Bean Improvement Cooperative Meritorious Service Award. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Agronomy, and the Crop Science Society of America.