J. William (Bill) Costerton directed the NSF-funded Center for Biofilm Engineering in Montana for more than a decade. In 2004, Bill was recruited by the University of Southern California to build a center for biofilms in the dental and medical areas. As one of the worlda (TM)s top 100 most-cited authors in microbiology, he has published more than 600 papers in refereed journals. He has received several awards and was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2005. Bill is widely regarded as the "grandfather" of biofilm microbiology.