Stanton Gelvin is the H. Edwin Umbarger Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University. He attended Columbia University and received his A.B. degree in Biology in 1970. He attended Yale University where he received his M.Phil. in 1973. After transferring to U.C. San Diego, he was introduced to the study of plant molecular biology by his Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Stephen H. Howell. As a Ph.D. student, he isolated and characterized the first non-ribosomal gene from plants. Gelvin subsequently moved to the University of Washington where he worked as a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell postdoctoral fellow with Drs. Eugene Nester and Milton Gordon. It was in these laboratories that Gelvin was introduced to the Agrobacterium system. Gelvin joined the Purdue faculty in 1981. His early work involved an elucidation of transcriptional activating elements of several Agrobacterium T-DNA genes; this work culminated in the development of the “super-promoter” used by hundreds of academic and industrial scientists. Approximately 25 years ago Gelvin turned to his current line of investigation, the identification and characterization of plant genes and proteins involved in Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation. Early in his career at Purdue, Gelvin was selected as a NSF Presidential Young Investigator. He received the Purdue University Herbert Newby McCoy Award in 2004, was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2006 and the AAAS in 2010. He holds 14 patents and has authored more than 150 publications. He has organized several national Crown Gall Conferences, and numerous workshops and sessions at international meetings. He has been editor for several journals, has served on numerous USDA and NSF grant review panels, and was panel director for the USDA IFAFS panel in 2000. Gelvin was instrumental in initiating and developing the PULSe interdisciplinary life sciences graduate program at Purdue University.