Dr. Linette Watkins is Department Head of The Department of Biochemistry and has been a Professor of Chemistry since 2014 at JMU. Her Ph.D. is from the University of Notre Dame and her B.S. is from Trinity University. Linette’s current research focuses on understanding the mechanism of bacterial desulfurization of fossil fuels and her research interests include enzymatic mechanisms of bacterial desulfurization of fossil fuels, specificity of enzymes used in industrial synthesis reactions, and novel biodegradation pathways found in soil bacteria. Dr. Watkins has been named an American Chemical Society Fellow - one of 99 scientists in the 2014 class of ACS Fellows who have demonstrated outstanding accomplishments in chemistry and made important contributions to ACS, the world’s largest scientific society.