Walter John Emil Kress (born Illinois, 4 March 1951) is an American botanist and the vice-president for science at the National Museum of Natural History.
His research later took him to Las Cruces Botanic Garden in San Vito where he studied what factors may prevent species hybridization.
Kress is now the vice-president of science at the National Museum of Natural History, where he formerly held positions of Curator and Chairman of the Department of Botany.
[4] Focusing mostly on the Zingiberales, including Heliconia, Musa, and other gingers,[4] Kress has extensively studied the systematics and plant animal interactions of this order.
[9] He aided in developing an award-winning smart-phone app, Leafsnap, and works as the Principal Investigator of the Leaf Project at the Smithsonian.
Sustained by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the consortium promotes interactions between scholars in complementary fields and have resulted in the facilitation of new avenues of thought in scientific endeavors.
Kress, as Director of the Biodiversity and Sustainability Consortium, brings together scientists from numerous fields to address broad research projects which dive deep into questions on biology with relevant societal impacts.