Joachim Wilhelm "Jo" Messing (September 10, 1946 – September 13, 2019) was a German-American biologist who was a professor of molecular biology and the fourth director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University. Upon his arrival at Rutgers in 1985, Jo Messing initiated research activity on computational and structural biology and further emphasis on molecular genetics of the regulation of gene expression and biomolecular interactions. In the eighties, he provided incubator space for two Biotechnology centers at Rutgers, one in Medicine and one in Agriculture. Subsequently, he also founded two new departments at Rutgers and served as the first chair, the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and the Department of Genetics. Messing was also involved in the Plant Genome Initiative at Rutgers, which has contributed to the sequencing of the maize, sorghum, and the rice genome. Besides maize, sorghum, and rice, they have also contributed to the sequencing of the Brachypodium and Spirodela genomes. Messing died at his home in Somerset, New Jersey on September 13, 2019, three days after his 73rd birthday. Source: Wikipedia (en)