
He is a professor of Plant Biology at the University of Georgia. His specialty is mycology, the study of fungi. He began using cinemicrography as a student at Yale and continued using this technique as a graduate student at the University. His research focuses on the biology of zoosporic fungi from marine, terrestrial and freshwater habitats. Porter has been a visiting scientist at the Northwest National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle and a visiting professor at UW, Portsmouth (UK) and at Duke University. Porter has mentored 12 graduate students and published more than 50 research articles and reviews. He is a member of the Mycological Society of America, the British Mycological Society and the Society for Evolutionary Protistology.