Dr. Brenneman was born in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and received his B.S. in Biology from Goshen College (Goshen, Indiana) and his Ph. D. in Plant Pathology from Virginia Tech. He joined the faculty of the University of Georgia in 1986 and currently serves as professor of plant pathology with responsibilities for research and extension programming on peanuts and pecans, two of the major crops in Georgia. He also teaches Introductory Plant Pathology at the UGA Tifton campus, and has mentored numerous graduate students and post-docs. His research program has been broad, including discovery of pecan truffles in Georgia, but his main focus has always been on developing improved, more cost-efficient methods of disease control. He has co-released 7 peanut cultivars and had more than 20 graduate students and post-docs. He is a fellow of both the the American Phytopathological Society and the American Peanut Research and Education Society. He has published over 150 refereed articles, and several hundred abstracts. He enjoys hunting, fishing, camping and exploring the great outdoors in his free time.