Editor's Roundup
USDA people in the news

Adrianna Hewings was selected as the director of the Midwest Area, based in Peoria, Ill., for the Agricultural Research Service. She succeeded Ric Dunkle, who served in that position from September 1992 until April 1999, when he became the deputy administrator for plant protection and quarantine in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

From August 1997 until her selection, Hewings served as associate director of ARS’s Midwest Area. She was assistant director of the Midwest Area from 1994-97.

From 1987-94 Hewings worked as the lead scientist in the cereal virology group for ARS’s Crop Protection Research Unit in Urbana, Ill. She began her career with ARS in 1983 as a research plant pathologist with the agency’s Foreign Disease Weed Science Research Unit in Frederick, Md., where she concentrated on the impact of exotic virus diseases in soybeans on American agriculture.

A native of Haverhill, Mass., Hewings holds a B.A. degree in education from the University of Massachusetts, a B.S. equivalent degree in biology from the University of Toronto, and both an M.S. degree in biology and a Ph.D. degree in plant pathology from the University of Illinois.