Thomas R. Fox, professor of silviculture in College of Natural Resources and Environment at Virginia Tech, has been named the Honorable Garland Gray Professor of Forestry by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The professorship was established in 1985 by the late state Senator Elmon Gray, who named it in memory of his father. Garland Gray also served in the Senate of Virginia.

A member of the Virginia Tech faculty since 2000, Fox has received international attention for his work in sustainable management of forest plantations in North and South America.

He is recognized as a global expert in plantation forest management and carries the distinction of Fellow in the Society of American Foresters and the Soil Science Society of America. He was also a Fulbright Scholar in Chile.

Fox has excelled in the research arena, making scholarly contributions to plantation forestry scholarship. He has received more than $38 million in grants to support his research program and graduate students.

Fox is co-director of the largest forestry plantation research cooperative in the world and serves as site director for the National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Forestry Systems.

He has directed 29 graduate students and supervised six postdoctoral fellows. He has published more than 75 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters with high citation rates. He is author of one of the top 100 most cited papers ever published by the Soil Science Society of America Journal.

Fox has taught thousands of students, landowners, researchers, and representatives from governmental, non-governmental, and private organizations.

Fox received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maine, his master’s degree from Virginia Tech, and his doctorate from the University of Florida.

Dedicated to its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Virginia Tech takes a hands-on, engaging approach to education, preparing scholars to be leaders in their fields and communities. As the commonwealth’s most comprehensive university and its leading research institution, Virginia Tech offers 240 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to more than 31,000 students and manages a research portfolio of $513 million. The university fulfills its land-grant mission of transforming knowledge to practice through technological leadership and by fueling economic growth and job creation locally, regionally, and across Virginia.

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