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My current role at Monsanto Company is cross-functional management of technologies for improving performance and attributes of soybean, canola, winter rapeseed, and sunflower crops. My responsibilities include identifying new oilseeds technology opportunities, product development through regulatory approval and product launch, and long-term strategic planning related to oilseeds research and development. Cross-functional management involves activities in biotechnology for genetic engineering of insect resistance, crops with higher and sustained yield potential, and new output traits for enhanced composition of oilseed crops, conventional and molecular breeding for a broad range of targets, genomics pipeline management for new traits, and the application of agricultural chemistries to the oilseeds portfolio. My long-term research interests are to facilitate technology advancements for solving agricultural problems through enabling technologies, genomics tool development, gene function identification, and understanding the genome regulatory circuits in physiological and developmental processes plants. My personal goals and the objective of my scientific networks are to make a contribution to agricultural sustainability.

How did you get into your current area of research?
"I can't say it was a part of a well-executed plan, unfortunately. I wish I could have planned it, but the fact is that my career has been a bit of a maze with one target, striving to be good at what I pursued - or to use the phrase loosely, to be excellent. I became interested in genetics and cell biology because of a fascination for the effects of ionizing radiation on living cells. I was a bit uneasy working with sources of ionizing radiation, but it started me to think more about the genetic makeup of organisms, mutations, and the molecular and functional basis for mutations. Ultimately, one thing led to the next, I started to try to characterize when genes were expressed, then to clone genes, then to sequence genes, then to transform cells and organisms with foreign genes. All of a sudden, I looked up and I was performing genomics, discovering and working with thousands of genes at a time."

What are your research questions?
"Identifying key agronomic and grain compositional traits and the technologies, genes and tools to create grower enhanced and nutritional oilseed crops, and where possible a more environmentally sustainable form of agriculture are my main challenges.

Currently, as a part-time principal investigator and sponsor of several projects, I still ask the questions, how are genes regulated and what are they doing? Because I think like a plant genomicist, I tend to focus on pathways of genes and not specific genes for important plant traits. So, I utilize transcription profiling, where one characterizes 1000s of genes at a time in response to a variant condition or treatment. However, ultimately, I feel like these types of studies will unravel part of the complex web and network of regulation of the thousands of genes in a plant genome, what I call genome regulation."

What opportunities do you see for people of color in plant biology?
"Plant biology has a rich future. The population is projected to continue to increase for some time doubling with the next 50 years; the mass of available land for agriculture is not unlimited, and opportunities for new uses of agricultural commodities as renewable resources and specialty products for specific functionalities continue to develop and be supported by industry and government. Phase I is technology applied to changing agronomic practices, i.e., to make agriculture more productive, to help sustain the environment for continued production of agriculture. This includes pesticide reduction in the soil and water and insuring an adequate supply of food for the earth's population and will evolve to changes in plant architecture to withstand different environments where crop production is needed. Phase II includes the enhancement of nutritional and functional characteristics of plant products and by-products. Our understanding of the biochemical and physiological processes derived from the efforts in plant biology will drive the capability to make edible plant products more nutritious, or with more desired flavor attributes, and functionality for replacement of other less desirable food components. Phase III is what we call plants as factories. Phase III will be a culmination of the understanding that plant biologist have generated focused on production of secondary metabolites or therapeutic compounds as pharmaceuticals, bio-replacements for plastics, more environmental and human safe bio-solvents, alternative lubricants with special functionalities.

Now that I've tried to share a vision that many in agricultural industry agree upon, I'd propose that the opportunities in plant biology will grow these visions, and that people that have different perspectives vis-a-vis cultural differences, work-style differences, and others will play an integral role. The need for dedicated scientists that are innovative and rich in new ideas and approaches are critical to achieving our vision in a short time frame. Also, involving people of color will assist in keeping this effort noble in a broad sense and will accelerate technology transfer to less fortunate and developing countries."

What advice would you give to an undergraduate considering a career in plant biology?
"I'd encourage undergraduates to be multi-dimensional, solid in computer literacy and competencies, and to begin to develop a breadth of expertise in biochemistry, physiology, and molecular genetics, before specializing in later training periods.

Plant biology is already in the midst of evolution. The complete sequence of the rice and Arabidopsis genomes has opened a door that will remain open for a while. The next 20 years will be focused on identifying functions of the more than 20,000 uncharacterized plant genes in a typical plant genome. Many learnings of gene function will be transferable from animal and microbe systems, but only in generalities. A lot of the early stage biology will be performed at a computer terminal. Researchers are working less and less with genes one at a time, and more with hundreds of genes at a time. Desirable strengths will be in bioinformatics and support of multiplex biology, physiology, biochemistry, and cell biology. Opportunities in biology (what we today call functional genomics) will be to make characterization as high throughput as possible, and to apply knowledge of the genome, genome interactions and genome networks to meet agriculture productivity and new product global needs. The solutions to sustainability agriculture, abundant food, and environmental gains will require integration of knowledge and skills across broad areas of plant biology, plant breeding, informatics, food and material sciences."