ASPB members share a common goal of promoting the growth, development, and outreach of plant biology as a pure and applied science. This column features some of the dedicated and innovative members of ASPB who believe that membership in our Society is crucial to the future of plant biology. If you are interested in contributing to this feature, please contact ASPB Membership at info@aspb.org.

Membership Corner

Name: Dina F. Mandoli
Title: Research Associate Professor
Place of work or school: University of Washington
Research area: Acetabularia development, genetics and cell biology, genomics of green plants from algae to angiosperms
Member since: ~1978

1. Has being a member of ASPB helped you in your career? If so, how?
Being an ASPB member has been invaluable to me in three ways: It has trained me for the tasks of being an ethically responsible faculty member and scientist, it has provided me with human resources as I have adapted to changes in the funding climate, and it has provided me with an outlet for my passion for public outreach and education. The breadth of ASPB has kept me strong as a scientist and broadly informed enough to adapt to the sea changes in plant biology that have occurred over the past decades.

2. Why has being a member of ASPB been important?
I simply cannot imagine having a career in plant biology without being an ASPB member. I have learned that if I volunteer to do a job, ASPB will actually train me to do it! My colleagues engaged in the same tasks offer experience, knowledge, and contacts and network with me to start the work we set out to do. Then, in the “get-it-done” mode, the excellent APSB headquarters staff help to implement all the good ideas coming from members. This is an incredible resource—my department should be so good! It is impossible for any group of humans to completely avoid cliques and politics, but ASPB has such a welcoming tradition that any member who offers to pitch in will eventually find a way to take advantage of this on-the-job training.

3. Was anyone instrumental in getting you to join ASPB?
My Ph.D. adviser, Winslow R. Briggs, encouraged me to join in my first year as a graduate student at Stanford. The first paper I ever published was in Plant Physiology—a great start for my thesis!

4. What would you tell nonmembers to encourage them to join?
The benefits to ASPB membership are many. I start with the tangible benefits like the journals; online membership access; the annual meeting, which keeps me abreast of plant physiology as a whole; education of members and the public; and funds for students and “good works.” Next I mention the intangibles I cited above. I end with the fact that ASPB has done more for keeping government funding for plant biology strong than probably any other professional society. Not being a member puts you at a professional disadvantage and means that you are being represented on Capitol Hill without paying your taxes!

5. Have you gotten a job using ASPB job postings or through networking at the annual meeting?
I am sure that my being part of ASPB has and will play a role in my marketability.

6. Have you hired anyone as a result of a job posting at the annual meeting, on our online Job Bank, or in the newsletter?
I hired Kyle Serikawa from Patricia Zambryski’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow. I recently had two jobs for research scientists posted on the ASPB web site and got lots of applicants from that advertising venue!

7. Do you still read print journals? Where do you usually read them: work, home, library, in the car, on the bus?
I usually skim online, save interesting PDFs, and print out a few selected PDFs to read when and where I get a quiet moment.

8. What do you think is “the next big thing” in plant biology?
In the broadest terms, the continued integration of different disciplines is the wave of now and the future. Technology bridges disciplines, public and private sectors, as well as scientist and nonscientist. NSF is driving this breakdown of barriers by the way it is judging proposals (e.g., you have to show broad impacts as well as good science now) and the way it is funding interdisciplinary, large-scale endeavors. My own funding is a good example: I am working on genomics with phylogenists and systematists to resolve fuzzy nodes in the Tree of Life and with bryologists, phycologists, and BAC-makers to provide genomic tools to reveal how plants evolved to land. Why is this trend important? Integration of knowledge has a chance of giving meaning to data we do not yet understand. I do not think we will understand the vast amount of data coming from the “omics” (metabol-, proteo-) without integrating those data with the physiology in model and non-model plant systems throughout the Tree of Life. By the same token, I do not think Congress will continue to fund science with taxpayer dollars unless we teach the public what good science does for humanity.

9. What person, living or dead, do you most admire?
I do not have a single person whom I admire; rather, I find qualities in every person that are admirable. These are persistence, honesty, kindness, passion for what you do, compassion for others, a sense of humor, courage in the face of adversity, balance in life, and tolerance of the foibles of others and oneself. Interestingly, in my first career, as a lay physical/occupational therapist, I discovered that many of these qualities are most developed in handicapped people.

10. What are you reading these days?
During the day I read science, but I read voraciously before bed because I need to clear my mind of work to get to sleep! Books overflow from my nightstand, and I am usually reading four or five at a time. I like sci-fi, historical fiction (particularly seafaring tales), novels, philosophy, history of science, classics, cookbooks, books on where words and phrases come from, joke books, famous quotes… . “So many books, so little time.”

11. What are your hobbies?
I love to be outdoors; to garden; to preserve food by home canning, drying, etc; and to be with friends and family.

12. What is your most treasured possession?
I do not value possessions much, just the people in my life and my relations to them, my health and the health of my loved ones, and, of course, life itself.

13. What do you have left to learn?
Vis-à-vis concrete knowledge, the more I know, the more I realize how little I know and how much less I understand. Discouraging, but true! Vis-à-vis life, how to be a better person and how to grow old and die with grace. The latter has struck home as I care for and watch my parents and their generation age and die.