Dr. Willey earned a B.A. magna cum laude in biology at the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in biological oceanography (marine microbiology) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Joint Program in Oceanography. She was a postdoctoral fellow from 1988-1992 at Harvard University.

Dr. Willey’s research interests focus on the filamentous soil bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor. The streptomyctes have a complex, fungal-like life cycle and produce most of the antibiotics currently used in human and veterinary medicine. Her lab explores the processes and molecules that govern this differentiation process. This includes biosurfactants produced by the microbe and the capacity of the bacteria to communicate with one another via extracellular signaling molecules. Her lab has received funds from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, American Society for Microbiology (ASM), and several pharmaceutical companies. Most recently, she and her colleagues have published papers in Molecular Microbiology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, and the Journal of Bacteriology. Dr. Willey is also on the editorial board of the ASM journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Dr. Willey’s teaches microbiology to allied health students (principally pre-Physician Assistants), biology majors, and at the graduate level. She is the lead author of two textbooks, Prescott, Harley and Klein’s Microbiology (7th edition) and Prescott’s Principles of Microbiology (due out Jan 2008); both texts are published by McGraw-Hill Higher Education, Inc.