Jean-François Meullenet, director of the experiment station and senior associate vice president for agriculture-research, was recently recognized by the Southern Association of Agricultural Experiment Stations Directors (SAAESD) by receiving the Experiment Station Directors' Excellence in Leadership award. He is the first representative from the University of Arkansas to receive the award. The SAAESD facilitates cooperation of regional and national research through 15 land-grant university agricultural experiment stations in the southern United States.
In addition to his Agricultural Experiment Station duties, Meullenet is currently serving as interim dean of the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas beginning. He has served as director of the Agricultural Experiment Station since 2018, after being named interim director in 2017. Before that, he was head of the Food Science Department and director of the Institute of Food Science and Engineering, posts he held since 2010.