By Sharon Dowdy
University of
Georgia
Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar Clifton Baile was among the six University of Georgia faculty members honored Tuesday, Oct. 7 in Athens, Ga., during the annual D.W. Brooks Lecture and Faculty Awards for Excellence ceremony.
Presented by the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the Brooks awards are in honor and memory of Gold Kist Inc. founder D.W. Brooks. A CAES alumnus, Brooks advised seven U.S. presidents on agriculture and trade issues. Although he died in 1999, his promotion of agriculture lives on through the Brooks awards.
Baile received the D.W. Brooks Award for Excellence Distinguished Professor award. Other 2008 honorees include Joseph McHugh, teaching; Michael Strand, research; Kathy Baldwin, public service extension; Tim Williams, global programs; and Jeanna Wilson, extension.
Baile’s distinguished career includes more than 35 years at UGA, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, SmithKline Beecham and Monsanto Company. He has participated in the founding of seven companies and currently serves on the board of directors of AgGlobalVision, Inc., Angionics, Inc., AptoTec, Inc., InsectiGen, Inc., MetaMorphix, Inc., Oncose, Inc. and rPeptide, LLC. He is also a member of the Georgia BIO Board and the Louisiana Gene Therapy Research Consortium.
Prior to joining UGA, Baile was a Distinguished Fellow and Director of Research and Development, Animal Sciences Division for the Monsanto Company. His department successfully developed an injectible bovine somatotropin with a two-week delivery system for dairy cows. Baile has successfully directed drug research and development projects from the discovery stage to FDA approval and commercialization.
He has served as a consultant to more than 20 companies, including several in the top Fortune 500. As chief executive officer and chairman of the board of AptoTec, Inc. and InsectiGen, Inc., he provides management for the research, development and commercialization programs.
He has coordinated the Georgia Research Alliance’s program in Agricultural Biotechnology at UGA. This program has dual goals of conducting leading-edge research and seeding start-up companies to commercialize animal and plant biotechnology in Georgia. A GRA Eminent Scholar, Baile served as a member of the board of trustees of the Georgia Research Alliance to represent other scholars.
In 2002, he won the UGA Lamar Dodd Award for recognition of outstanding body of scholarly and creative activities in the sciences. The following year he was presented a community award by the Georgia Biomedical Partnership for “putting UGA on the map as one of the most active biotech business incubation centers in the Southeast.” In 2007, he was awarded the McPherson College Alumni Citation of Merit.
He is known internationally for research on the control of feed intake and the regulation of energy balance in animals. His contributions include approximately 350 journal articles, 300 abstracts and presentations for scientific meetings and 17 patents.
(Sharon Dowdy is a news editor with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)
