Director of the Plant Breeding Center and Advisor to the Community Plant Breeding Team

Rex is Distinguished University Teaching Professor and endowed chair in maize breeding and genetics at the University of Minnesota. He obtained his undergraduate degree in the Philippines in 1983 and his Ph.D. in plant breeding from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1988. Rex developed the widely used genomic best linear unbiased prediction or GBLUP procedure in 1994, and most of his work has focused on marker-assisted breeding. Rex teaches graduate courses in plant breeding and in professional skills for scientists as well as an undergraduate course on coffee. He has written two textbooks, entitled Breeding for Quantitative Traits in Plants and Essentials of Plant Breeding. In his leisure time, Rex enjoys playing the acoustic guitar, going tandem biking with his wife, and spending time with their six adult F1 progeny and three F2 progeny.