Science Talk With Steve Shafer
[Running time: 01:28:30]

Welcome to science talk with this year's Hall of Fame inductees. I am Steve Schaefer, the Associate Administrator for the National Programs at ARS and once again your host for this second edition of science talk. 

I am here at the George Washington Carver Center in Beltsville and here in the room with me are members of the Administrator's Council, senior leader team in ARS and we are joined by some national program leaders and some of the winners of this year's ARS awards who are in town for the recognition program that was held yesterday. 

And, of course, I'm here with this year's inductees, the stars of our show t who will be full-fledged Hall of Famer's by this time tomorrow after our induction ceremony this evening. Before I introduce these illustrious colleagues I want to go over today's format briefly. I have a series of questions for this guys that should last about 45 minutes and then we will switch over to a Q&A session where we will take questions from the audience here in the room as well as from those of you out there. We can take those questions online. If you are online what you have to do is click on the place that says "Ask a Question" the little button there on your web console, type in your question along with who it is addressed to and click submit and finished. If you are here in the audience just raise your hand depending on how old you are you may hear a clicking, I don't know, [laughter] but one of our staff will bring the mic over to you and you can ask your question. 

But, any way thanks to everybody for taking time to join me today. We are here to celebrate this year's inductees into the ARS Science Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame was established in 1986.The first inductee was Edward F. Knipling, the father of our previous administrator. The 88 men and women who have been inducted into the ARS Hall of Fame represent a very special group of scientists, really the best of the best and include such luminaries such as Orvil Vogel who was inducted in 1987 for his work on semi-dwarf wheats and innovative production systems that helped spark the green revolution. Virginia Holsinger who was induced in 2000 for her work that led to products such as Lactaid, allowing a large portion of the public to enjoy dairy products; and, my first boss when I came to the Office of the National Programs, Dr. Alan Diedrich inducted in 2011 for his stellar work in water management. 

Every member of the Hall of Fame has four characteristics in common. Each has produced a major impact on agricultural research by solving a significant problem through research or providing outstanding leadership to significantly advance agricultural research. Each has made accomplishments that continue to be recognized by the agricultural research community. Each possesses the character and record of achievement worthy of emulation by younger agricultural scientists and each has made achievements that were nationally or internationally recognized by their peers in the scientific community. 

Today we get to talk with the inductees, three of the four that will be brought into the Hall of Fame. Traditionally we have held the session just with the Administrator's Council. The administrator began these sessions probably a decade or more ago with the aim of picking the brain of our Hall of Famers. We would sit in the meeting room at the inductees, ask them questions and let them reflect on their careers and give us advice. 

Last year we realized that technology makes it possible for us to invite all of you to participate in this exchange and so we hope you'll appreciate the insight and the words of wisdom from these outstanding scientists as we have appreciated them over the years. Without further ado, let's get started. 

I do want to make one comment, though, about timing. It's sort of an accident that worked it out this way but as you know tonight is the second of the debates among the Republican candidates for president and I have heard through the grapevine that there has been some discussion about which of the panelists which will assume the role of Donald Trump. [Laughter] I only hope that they have talked about this and really thought about it carefully. We will proceed with that basis. 

But, I really am truly honored to introduce ARS's 2014 Hall of Fame inductees. These include Dr. Leon Kochian, Center Director & Research Leader at the Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture & Health in Ithaca, New York, Dr. Kochian is being inducted into the Hall of Fame for internationally recognized pioneering work in using molecular biology, genetics and plant breeding to improve crop yields on marginal soils in developing countries. 

Dr. Donald Ort Location Coordinator and research leader at the Global Change and Photosynthesis research unit in Urbana, Illinois honored for outstanding leadership vision and productivity in advancing research in the global climate change impacts on photosynthesis and crop production. 

Dr, Ralph Scorza, supervisory research horticulturist, at the Appalachian Fruit Research Laboratory in Kearneysville, West Virginia. He is being inducted for pioneering the integration of bio-technological and traditional breeding for the development of new tree fruit cultivars with novel tree architectures and fruit traits. 

And, finally, Dr. Scott Yates, supervisory soil scientist and research leader at the U.S. Salinity Lab in Riverside California. Dr. Yates is honored for exceptional research, leadership and technology transfer reducing the adverse environmental effects from soil fumigation while maintaining pest-control efficacy. 

 I should mention that Dr. Yates had already planned to be on international travel when this data was set so he is not with us but he was a good sport. I sent him some of our discussion questions ahead of time and he sent me some bullet points so as we have an opportunity to talk through the questions and answers with the group I will try to introduce his perspectives. 

Thanks for everyone for being with us today I hope this is going to be as much fun for you as I expect it to be. It was a lot of fun for me last year. Let's get right to our panel. 

So, have you gotten a look at everybody? Why don't we start by making sure everybody knows who's who and I've read the citations for why each of you happen to be here in the Hall of Fame. Why don't you just take 30 seconds individually, one at a time not all at once please, and tell us in your own words, maybe 30 seconds or so about the kind of research you have done that got you here today. Start with your Ralph.

Ralph Scorza: 

My research has been in [Indiscernible-low volume] tree fruits and what we've done is develop new tree varieties with new architectures so these tree architectures have been developed for high-density production systems for growing trees in small spaces and we are looking at mechanization of [indiscernible] we've also gotten down to the point that we know which genes cause different architectures so now we will be able to change the architecture [indiscernible] … we have also been doing work in genetic engineering with tree fruits and we started off with the diseases of stone fruits … plum pox virus and through genetic engineering we've developed a tree that is very resistant to disease [Indiscernible]

Shafer: 

Thanks. Don, I have known you for a long time in the global climate change community tell us what you do. 

Don Ort: 

So, I am Don Ort from Urbana, Illinois and as Steve said I'm interested in [Indiscernible-low volume] 

[Off Camera]	Excuse me your mics are off. Is there a button they should be pressing? Maybe we should start over again. 

Shafer: Ralph, I couldn't hear you. Would you like to tell us what you do? 

Scorza: 

I can't remember what I said but any way I'm a tree fruit breeder, a stone fruit breeder, and we 
have developed through conventional breeding trees that have different architectures so that will do well with high-density production systems or where people have small spaces for trees. So we have now gotten to the point where from conventional breeding we have actually learned what the genes are that cause different architectures and now we can change the architecture of virtually any tree … fruit tree or other tree And we have also been working in genetic engineering and we have been looking at a disease … we started off looking at plum pox virus which is the most serious disease of stone fruit species and we have genetically engineered a tree that is highly resistant to this disease. So, what we are now doing through these different technologies using convention and new approaches to move tree fruit breeding into the 21st century. 

Shafer: That's what I though you said. How's the volume now. Are we good? Alright, good. Don Ort? 

Don Ort: 

I am Don Ort. I'm located in Urbana, Illinois and my interest is in photosynthesis and how photosynthesis is related to yield and yield potential and most recently how that's being impacted by global climate change. And so, a lot of the research that I do is enabled by … internationally … the new facility that that we have in Urbana that is jointly run and financed by ARS and the University of Illinois and in this facility we are able to mimic conditions both atmospheric conditions and temperature conditions and rainfall conditions that we expect through the middle of the century and we do it under field conditions. This allows us to ask important questions about how global change today and in the future will impact photosynthesis and crop yield and we are devising strategies to adapt plants and many of these are biosynthetic biology and transgenics. 

Shafer: Thank you, Don. Leon Kochian? 

Kochian: 

Thanks, Steve. First I want to say I think you can tell from the three of us none of us have the -- have the hair to play the role of Donald Trump. [Laughter]

I'm a molecular physiologist, a crop molecular physiologist, who studies crop adaptations to marginal soils to the environmental stresses that plants encounter in soils. 

So, these are both figuring out the genes and the physiologic mechanisms that allow plants to do more with less in terms of dealing with insufficient water and essential mineral nutrients or also dealing with too much in terms of toxic metals. This really focuses on root traits an emerging area of breeding for root traits. Once we identify the genes and the mechanisms we can use that information in conjunction and collaboration with plant breeders to develop crops with improved root traits that have better yields with less inputs. 

Shafer: So, Leon, how long have you been with ARS?

Kochian: In two weeks it will be 30 years. 

Shafer: 30 years. Don? 

Ort: A lot longer than that. [Laughter]. 

Shafer: Yeah, OK I'll get back to that … Ralph? 

Scorza: 35 years. 

Shafer: 

35 year. So, Ralph, what brought you to ARS? I mean guys like you are … as is the case with all of our Hall of Famers … at the beginning of your career and throughout your careers I am sure you have had opportunities to go to work for any number of organizations  C academic, government, private industry. I don't have to ask you to be willing to bet that you have received offers along the way. 

Ralph, what is it that … Why did you come to ARS in the first place and why did you stay for 35 years? 

Scorza: 

 I first came to ARS because I was very interested in research that was impactful to society. I had worked overseas before ARS and I really knew that our culture needed some long-term and high-risk research. I knew that ARS was that type of institution. I like the stability of the program where we can start a program and really move with it over the years and make some significant contributions. That really attracted me to a career with ARS. Why I have stayed with ARS is because it's continued to be an institution where I could do that. Where I could come up with new approaches and I could institute those approaches into programs and in the long-term have real impact. 

Shafer: What about you Don? Why did you come to ARS and what made you stay? 

Ort: 

When I came to ARS it was really a no-brainer because I was very much invested in photosynthesis even early in my career and at the time there was forming at Urbana a new research unit for photosynthesis research. It was already a place where there was a history of collaboration between ARS and the university in the area of photosynthesis and it was one of the top places in the world. 

I remember very distinctly the week I interviewed with ARS in Urbana, I also interviewed at Berkeley and Davis and my fear was that I was going to get an offer from one of them before I heard from ARS but that didn't happen so I'm here. 

Why did I stay? I guess a couple of reasons. One is like Ralph said and that is the horizons have never dimmed so there's always this horizon to do more. And, it's a place that reinvents itself. This reinvention is the second thing and that is, you know, I've observed that people that are successful over a long period of time reinvent themselves. It's not passive. They go out and they do it on purpose. So sometimes a new question; sometimes it's a new set of really disruptive techniques; sometimes it's bringing new science in. 

And ARS allows me to do that. One, because of this modest stable funding that we have and so that you can do things that are outside of other kinds of funding that you have and even in RPES it's a little bit captured you get to rewrite who you are going to be in your RPES. And, so it's this ability to reinvent and stay productive and do what I want to do. 

Shafer: Leon, 30 years in two weeks. How did you get here and why did you stay? 

Kochian: 

Well it's interesting because I came here sort of by accident in that .I knew very little about ARS. I had completed my PhD at UC Davis, was running my professor's lab while he was on sabbatical in Germany and he sent me a fax which was a new way to communicate in 1984 and he said look at this ad for this job. It's at this USDA lab, ARS lab at Cornell. It's a very good lab the other good agricultural university along with UC Davis and it was like written for you. And, I said "Well what do I have to lose?" I interviewed I was really impressed with the outstanding science as a lab that had, had a former Nobel Prize winner and, wasn't there anymore but outstanding scientist and I could see I'd have good people to collaborate with and be mentored—the funding, having stability for funding was very attractive because I could get going, do more high-risk research as Don was saying and get my program going. That's what I did and then after a few years I started applying for extramural grants to add to that. So, why have I stayed? 

We have been able to build, and continue I think to have a world-class center there so it's been a wonderful environment but again having that environment, the stability, the financial stability to be able to take risks enabled me to stay, I think, at the cutting edge, to do different things as Don was saying, I have reinvented myself several times and it was necessary to keep up with the first molecular biology that was coming in and then the genomic revolution. 

Shafer: 

Let me follow up on that with a couple of you here. How important was it in your decision to come to ARS at the time that you are going to be working on a university campus and how important has that factor been in your career over the years? I spent the first half of my career as an SY at North Carolina State and I was a lot of benefits in that. Can you talk about maybe the pros and cons of being on a university campus with your ARS career?

Kochian: 

I think for me it was very important, particularly at first, because I was going to be looking for a faculty position. So here I was at a great agricultural university and there was an adjunct appointment associated. So, I had found that to be very attractive and it has continued to be very important to me through the years because Cornell has been a strong partner with us in helping us to actually grow our group and to have the collaborations and it's enabled us and me to recruit top scientists so I think it's been a very positive relationship for both Cornell and ARS through the years and so I can't think of any downside to it except when people don't identify themselves with ARS first and Cornell second. 

Shafer: Thanks for that. Don, what about University of Illinois? 

Ort: 

I did my PhD at Michigan State and we had ARS scientists embedded in the department. I was quite familiar with them. When I had this opportunity, it was familiar when I went to interview it was clear that it was going to be the same kind of relationship and as Leon said, I think it's been good for our unit and as well as for ARS and certainly $ 3000,000 as an SY goes a lot further when you are embedded in the facilities of a state organization versus federal facilities. 

I guess the second thing is, we talk a lot about stakeholders. Certainly the most important stakeholder to my unit and I would say to our location is the University of Illinois. Because, those are the people that can really go out and advocate for us in a reliable and a predictable way and they do it. 

Shafer: Ralph, Your association with university colleagues … How does that work for you? 

Scorza: 

Well I'm at a resource laboratory that's not connected to a university and we have a very special group of scientists there so it's always been exciting and remains exciting. I don't know what it would have been like on a campus but I'm quite happy at the Appalachian Fruit Research Station. 

It has not inhibited my ability to work with colleagues at universities, colleagues in the private sector and international colleagues so I don't really feel that I'm missing anything in my career by being at that place. I'm happy there. 

Shafer: Good. Several of you have used the word impact as you have talked about your career and where you have been and so forth. What do you mean when you say impact? How do you think of it and how do you measure it? How do you know you are having it in your mind and how does that guide you as you do your work? Leon?

Kochian: 

Well, I think you can … I look at impacting at several different levels particularly through my career arc. Earlier in my career, impact was getting known through my research I do fairly fundamental research through publication in the best possible journals, through giving talks that people could clearly see our work for ARS so the impact early on was more specifically making my name and making the name of the research program but as I matured and this is where ARS is really a great environment where I do basic research. We're a mission oriented agency. I learned through the years and actually maybe it converged with technologies enabling us to do this basic research and translate it into crop improvement through working with plant breeders. And that's where the real impact is, improving society, the environment and the world. We are starting to be able to have … the resource is starting to have those sorts of impacts. 

So, that's I consider really that much more important for me and the other place that is impact for me is as a leader and mentor as the Center Director. I've been proud of the people we have recruited young and mid-career and seeing their careers flourish. That's another type of impact that we have, typically as we get older. 

Shafer: Don, how do you keep an eye on impact? 

Ort: 

I guess when I look back at my career I never stopped doing thesis projects. It wasn't on purpose. I found that I've always packaged things into three or four or five years packets. Sometimes, of course, in graduate school it's just you and then as you expand out and have a research team sometimes it's more people. 

The way this relates to impact in my mind is just that conceptually these projects have a beginning and an end and when they have a beginning and an end you are always on the alert that you've had the impact and now you are working on the details or the project isn't leading to the impact that you expected it to and you need to redirect and go in other directions. And, so just personally, that's been a very effective way for me to keep my eye on impact. 

Shafer: 

Yeah, I had a … When I was finishing up my thesis a member of the faculty at NC State, a guy named Jack Bailey told me I only had to do 10 more PhD theses and then I could retire. Which was sort of a frightening thought at the time. Ralph? Impact. What's that mean? 

Scorza: 

Well, I had the opposite experience from Leon in the sense that I started out very conventional producing products for growers and new varieties, new stone fruit varieties. And, as I got to work with colleagues that our laboratory at the younger colleagues doing more of the molecular work I have been able to work in that area -- also the genetic engineering and gene identification. 

So, for me, impact as Leon said is many faceted. I really feel impact when I see grower growing a variety of peach that I have released. I also see impact in a journal when we have a paper that demonstrates something new. There is many types of impact and they all give a sense of accomplishment, a sense of what I'm doing has some meaning and that's what I see as impact. 

Shafer: 

Scott Yates, who again, is not here from the salinity lab in his notes, he … paraphrasing what he said here, but basically his idea of going for impact or keeping an eye on impact was a lot of it was on the problem identification side of things – Finding a problem that he knew would that solving it would be of value to somebody and then working very hard to solve the problem so that he would know that the stakeholder, or customer, would appreciate it would value it when it got to the end of the research. So, some similarities through several of your comments here about that.

A couple of you, actually all three of you, are also involved in management—RL, lab director, whatever position you've got but all three of you have that role. 

As you all know that gets you a big fat salary supplement in ARS and you get a break your publications and all of that stuff. Seriously though why did you choose to do that? What is the incentive for you? What has kept you in that role? I guess I'm also curious as to how long each of you has been in that kind of role. 

Ralph? Let's work back from that end this time. 

Scorza: 

I'm a lead scientist and I've been in that role since the, -- I think the early 90s or late 80s or something like that. I guess I am interested in that -- I'm interested in working with people. I really enjoy working with other scientists. I enjoy getting a group together and formulating ideas – so I like that ability, the opportunity to get people together -- and look at problems and say where are we going now or where can we go in the future and getting people together like that. But, one thing that's really great about ARS is you don't have to go into those kind of positions to make it in ARS, to move your career forward. You don't have to go into administration and sometimes that's not where certain people want to go and so I think it is really a great opportunity to say "I love science. I only want to do science" really administration isn't where I want to go, I still want to make … have a career that moves forward, you can do it in ARS. You don't have to move into an administrative type or position and so that a real advantage. 

Shafer: Don, how long have you been an RL?

Ort: I'm not sure but I think 95 or something like that.

Shafer: 

95 years? No. So, what is the incentive to do that? I mean one of the challenges of an RL is you answer to both sides of the matrix management. You know, you've got the Office of National Programs and you've got the line management and really it's the only position in the agency that sits at that crossroads. What keeps you going in that?

Ort: 

I mean, I suppose the position of RL is pretty idiosyncratic with the unit and where you are. I consider myself much more a research facilitator than I am a research leader and so my unit is made up of seven SYs. Every one of them is an independent, productive scientist. They all know stuff that I don't and so the incentive is to do something that I can to enable them to do good science. 

The reward is also huge. The reward is that working with and around these people, I'm doing things that I wouldn't be doing. My science is going places it wouldn't be going without having this expertise around me. And the other reward is that I contribute to their programs and so I do know things that they don't and I can contribute to it. And, so the way my unit runs is that it is very much a peer unit. It's really not that big of a burden. 

Shafer: Leon how many years? 

Kochian: 

About 18. I became head of the U.S. Plant, Soil and Nutrition Lab which is what we were called before 97 and we grew substantially in the intervening and about 10 or 15 years and then in 2006 we came to the Robert W. Holly Center for Agriculture and Health. 

Shafer: So, in all those joys and sorrows. What keeps you at it? 

Kochian: 

Well, you know it's interesting because I think I was younger than most of the scientists when our previous director retired. But we had shrunk from 13 to 7 SYs and I thought … I looked at and felt that I had leadership capabilities and also built relationships with national program staff, with Cornell and with others that I could do something about that. We were able to... Some of it was luck, the economy was booming. But, we were able to grow to about 30 SYs, almost, at our peak, we've shrunk back a bit now. I found it very rewarding. So, I've been able to bring in outstanding scientists, world-class scientists, young and mid-career and that's really … it's helped my career. Certainly, it's been a lot of work but I've been able to maintain my research partly because of the outstanding colleagues around me. It's hard sometimes because of the administration, of course. We all know that but I have found it rewarding. 

Shafer: 

So 30+ years for each of you--20 years or more in leadership roles of one sort or another let's keep this on the positive. In that time, what changes have you seen in this agency, in ARS, for the better. What things have happened over the past 30+ years that you think are good positive developments in ARS,   Don? 

Ort: 

I think that organizationally we have streamlined and so, I don't even know what the organization was when I came into the agency, but we had regions and lots of different stuff. I think that it has simplified and maybe it's just because I've become more aware that I understand reporting lines better and understand management lines better and so I do think that we have gotten better at that. I think the other thing that bears mentioning … not necessarily we've gotten better at it, we've always been good at it and I think that's RPES. 

Shafer: 

You've mentioned that, RPES now twice in a positive sense. Talk to us a little bit more about that.

Ort: 

I think that it is a method of evaluating accomplishment that is unbiased, in its unpolitical yet it ferrets out excellence and it rewards excellence. I think that people in the agency who understand it look at it as a benefit for working here from the standpoint of they know they are going to be treated fairly and I think people from the outside who understand it, in many ways envy it because it's so apolitical and people really do get evaluated in a straight forward and predictable way. But in a way that has significant rigor. 

Shafer: 

Ralph, in the 30 odd years that you have been with us what have been some positive development in ARS? 

Scorza: 

I think having more possibilities to work with private industry or the private sector. I really appreciate the office of technology transfer in terms of intellectual properties and in terms of having the ability again to work with the private sector I think it's really been -- especially for my work of getting products out there, getting new varieties out there it's really helped us move forward in that direction. I think a more international feeling of we need to give and take internationally. We have information and technologies that they need and they have some that we need so that's been a good thing. And, I think just it feels to me like these days ARS has a greater ability to get out there, to get out there nationally and internationally, public and private and so that's been really exciting and it stimulates the kind of thinking that a scientist in ARS can have and essentially or basically there are no limits of who you can work with and how you can work with them and so that's been a big change. An evolution I have seen has been very good. 

Shafer: Right. Leon? 

Kochian: 

When I joined the agency 30 years ago when I think back was -- the agency was more conservative and maybe more rigid I think both Don and Ralph have kind of alluded to this I think we have a more flexible agency. I'll give an example. When I joined I said "Look it. I want to write extramural grants" and I'd heard from some people, "oh, you're discouraged." Well, I think I've been fortunate to be in an area where the area directors were more encouraging but that was something that was not encouraged and now it is and it's a good additional resource for ARS to expand their portfolio and their impact is through competing for extramural funding and we do it much more routinely now. Working within industry, as Ralph said, I think is something that is promoted much more now and is easier to do. I think ARS has done a pretty good job at keeping up with … I mean biology has changed so dramatically in my career in terms of genomics and then systems biology and integrating not just computer science but engineering and ARS we're well poised to make impact and we have I think kept pretty modern, led a lot by the scientists. We can be in some ways a bottoms up organization and I like that. I didn't feel like it was that way as much when I joined the agency. 

Shafer: 

So, you feel like as time has gone by the individual scientists have had more flexibility, more say... 

Kochian:

Yeah, except for things like travel. The mechanisms that are sometimes imposed on us from above the agency. 

Shafer: 

Well, let's take that. Looking back over the same 30 years what's been something that has happened in ARS that you wished hadn't happened in terms of a development or change. Keeping in mind that the administrator and the associate administrators are here. So, no pressure. 

Kochian: 

We are all frustrated right now, well you know everything's connected. There's a lot of problems I feel right now with getting administrative things done and partly that's due with budget issues and it's never been more severe. And, there's less money for research and less money for administration. I'm working my way through this diplomatically but I understand as a center director for years a lot of these problems, most of them, some of them were not created by ARS. We're responding. It's a frustrating time in terms of HR for example. Travel … It seems like the system is never -- particularly international travel … [Indiscernible-multiple speakers] 

Shafer: Leave something for these guys … [laughter] Don what is something that you think of the course of 30 years has happened that you would've rather not happened. 

Ort: 

I guess more than something that I'm discouraged about I think that there are things on the horizon that ARS really needs to be able to respond to. One of these really has to do with the changing face of extramural funding. More and more we are going to these large collaborative projects that are multi-institutional and ARS scientists are involved in a very integral way in many of these. But, I think what many of us that are involved in these understand is that we do not have the infrastructure for an ARS scientists to lead any of these. I think that is an issue. I think it puts an artificial ceiling on us where we should be in a leadership role and we are not and in some cases because the ARS scientist is not in the leadership role some of these large institutional awards may not be successful just because not everyone recognizes it's not the right person to be in the leadership role. The infrastructure we are lacking is really the infrastructure to administer these big grants and there is also an issue with the intellectual property that's coming up from the standpoint that the CRADA is not enough, at least the problems that we are running into right now deal with intellectual property across multiple institutions. 

Shafer: Ralph. One of the less desirable things that have happened.

Scorza: 

I agree with everything that's been said. But, I guess in general I would say that I deal more and more with the bureaucracy and people and offices that I have to answer to that I don't really sometimes know exactly who they are. The science I know. The science I can deal with but I spend more and more time dealing with bureaucratic issues and I'm not sure why I'm really doing some of those things. I would say that's just -- I never lose sleep over science. Or rarely because those issues we know how to solve those problems or at least approach them but sometimes I lose a lot of sleep about getting did I get this thing done in time. Did I answer that question in time and on and one …So that's been something I would like to see that we focus more and more on the.–science and those questions.

Shafer: 

That makes me think of I guess another angle on some of these questions and that is, the thing that has brought you here today is extraordinary productivity and impact. How have you sustained that for 30 years and more? How have you kept up your energy, kept up your creativity in such a way that puts you in at this unusual level of productivity that lands you in the ARS Science Hall of Fame? How do you keep that up? Leon?

Kochian: 

For me I have always loved biology. When I was a little kid I knew I was going to be a biologist. I remember in second grade when the teacher talked about the white cliffs of Dover. I raised my hand and said "do you know those are the prehistoric remains of protozoans." I still remember the look she gave me like I was a strange person. I think I've had an innate curiosity and drive about understanding how the world works. That's part of it but I want to talk more about, I think, about how ARS has helped me keep creative. Because, again this, I will call it a safety net but that's understating it, this ability to allow me to make the changes I had to do. 

I was a physiologist and then in the early 90s I had to become a molecular biologist physiologist and in the late 90s into genomics and now integrated genetics. It would've been much harder to do at the university. Much harder. We had an environment that was, I think, both there was the resources but also I had the opportunity and safety net to be able to make these changes and to have little gaps though they didn't turn out to be, but the potential for gaps as I retooled and relearned. 

Shafer: Re-invention.

Kochian: Yes. 

Shafer: Ralph how have you kept up your energy and creativity for 30 years and more? 

Scorza: 

I've always been curious and very interested in science and how things work so I think it is just – as Leon said that something innate that you're just always asking questions, always wondering. How can I can find out how a system is working? So, again, as Leon said ARS has allowed that to happen. I also started out in a very conventional breeding program moved into molecular and that was something I felt comfortable doing in ARS. So I think also another aspect is the people that I'm working with that's very, very important. We feed on each other's enthusiasm so that keeps a level of enthusiasm going. I think that ARS has a very large cadre of very intelligent, very excited scientists and this is what certainly has kept me going over the years.

Shafer: Obviously it has worked. 

Scorza: Yes, it's been very good.

Shafer: Don. What works for you?

Ort: 

Well, you know, I think there's a theme here. We talked about the importance of being able to reinvent yourself and how ARS makes that possible and what reinvention does for you is it allows you to stay at the frontier of your field and do what's exciting. 

If you are doing things that are exciting, it's not work. Not difficult to stay there. But I know, and I suspect Leon and Ralph know too, that sometime down the road there's going to be another need to reinvent. And, I suppose when you no longer have the energy and desire to do that that's the sign when you should retire. It's really staying at the frontier of research. 

Shafer: 

Let me take a more personal turn here. Something that we hear about a fair amount these days is work-life balance. Early in my career you really did not hear that much about that. We talk about it a fair amount now but I think it's safe to say that people who are really successful have some sort of an innate sense of what that balance is. They don't burn out. They not only maintain this level of creativity and energy, they do so without burning out. Talk to us about -- how do you balance your work and your civilian life. Let's call it that way. Leon?

Kochian:

Sometimes I think my wife thinks I don't balance very well. But seriously, I think for me part of it is family. That's been very important. My wife and my daughter. My wife and I are partners. She's here. She will be at the banquet tonight and she has been very supportive and has relieved me of certain things that have allowed me to work long hours and to travel like I have, particularly with the international research that we do. 

I like to brag we have an old farmhouse and it needed to be painted and she prepped and painted the exterior of our farmhouse. I brag about it. Wow, it's like how many wives would to that? So, but again I think it is much deeper than that. The other thing I think for me is I have to have other interests. And, I kind of got into one because we got a dog about 15 years ago and I'm now a big dog person but -- I got involved in getting a dog park set up in Ithaca and as a leader of that and we are the only dog park that composts it's dog waste and I've been interviewed twice by the New York Times science writer not for my research but because we compost the dog poop. Well, I'll stop with that.

Shafer: 

Inspiring indeed [laughter] Don, you are also a dog person. That's an interest we have talked about and shared over the year. But in addition to that what's work-life balance mean to you? 

Ort: 

Let's go back to the dogs. Probably this question should go to our wives and families but what I always talk about to my post-docs and my students is you have to do two things to have a long career. One is to figure out what sustainable means to you from the standpoint of a sustainable workload and it's different for different people and they do it in different ways whether they are morning people or evening people, whether they take a Wednesday off and work a Saturday. 

The other thing that I think that you have to do and have to be able to do to be successful long-term is you have to know how to sprint. There has to be times when there is a deadline or something is really important to do that you have to put the hours in, Saturday and Sunday if it's all night. Whatever it takes. To me figuring out what sustainable and I certainly have colleagues that I know that what they are doing is not sustainable. The hours they are putting in and they are going to burn out. I think each person has to figure it out for themselves and it's different in different times of life. 

There is an SY in my unit right now she has a young family and so she's gone every day at four because she's picking her kids up and that's fine. So she figures out what she needs to get done and she does some stuff in the evening. She finds out a sustainable way to do it. 

Shafer: And for those of you who are curious Don is successful in serious dog training. 

Ort: 

Yeah, so I got into dog training a long time ago. I have golden retrievers that we train in obedience and fieldwork and it is something I enjoy doing. I enjoy more the dogs. They are all pets. I enjoy more the dogs and training more than I do the competition. It's been an important part of my life.

Shafer: 
 
This illustrates how much smarter Don is than I am. He got into it with golden retrievers. I tried to get into it with Bassett hounds. [Laughter] They're great trackers but they don't do much in obedience. 

 Ralph, how have you maintained this work-life balance so that you have maintained your creativity?

Scorza: 

I think you'll have to ask my family that question. Family is very important to me. And, I do spend quite a bit of time with family as I can. Now the children are grown so they are off on their own. I love art. I actually am a jewelry designer and I also do sculpture. That gives me the opposite type of mentality that sometimes when I'm doing art I realize something in science – I get an idea in science and sometimes when I'm in science I get an idea for an art piece. That's been really important. These days I've been more on the side of doing the science than the art but that's been very important to me. I've been doing that for about 33 or 34 years. So, that's been with me a long time. I find that that really is a good counterbalance between the two. 

Shafer: 

Interesting, interesting. This morning you spent some time with some of the other award winners. I think that Carlin is here and he going to talk to us later about some discussions but I guess I'm curious -- I'm sort of looking at the time and we want to leave some time for questions but I would like to ask each of you to give a little bit of advice to an early career ARS scientists who might be out there, who's looking at the three of you listening to how you have sustained your careers and what you've done. Give that hypothetical early career scientist a little bit of advice. What would you say to them? Leon?

Kochian: 

I think that the advice that I'm going to give is not overarching it's a specific trait that we need to have and I think it's really important and that is to not be afraid. To be fearless and to also be able to deal with perceived failure because for me when I made these reinventions each time, especially the first time, it was frightening because I'm having to learn new things. But I found, I saw my colleagues at the time, the physiologists that didn't make the transition were left behind. And so don't let your fears stop you. I think that's a really important thing particularly early in your career because biology – it seems science is changing rapidly and it's going to continue to change so you have to continue to be flexible. 

And, the other part of that kind of goes with the fear is don't be afraid of rejection. You think about it the funding rates right now for extramural grants are 5% so you are rejected 95% of the time. I've been a long-term editor of plant physiology and the rejection rate there for papers is 70% and Don was the editor-in-chief and he helped keep those levels. And then if you go to a place like Nature or Science, it's 95%. And so, that's not failure that's just part of the process. You're not failing. Each time I get a rejection I feel like I'm kicked in the stomach but then you bounce back. It's part of the culture. You have to understand that and not let it stop you. 

Shafer: Don, What advice do you have for an early career SY? 

Ort: 

Let me just answer it for the very early career SY and my advice is stay focused and be at the bench. I think when you come out of the post-doc and are taking your first independent job it's not time to reinvent at that point. Take the tools that you have and really focus at being on the bench and asking questions and getting data. I think the worst thing an incoming scientist can do is emulate a senior scientist. Their job is different. Your job is an incoming scientist is really to use the tools you have, the skill that you have which must be considerable, we hired you, and. use them and get those publications because if your career does not start fast it's not going to go very far. 

Shafer: Ralph, advice? 

Scorza: 

I would add to the comments that one of the questions that I ask and I think that young people should ask as they're getting into science is that if everybody is doing this, should I be doing it? Think ahead. If everybody jumps to this field what's going to be the next field? That's important. New scientists will have to start off in an area that they are familiar with and that they know they can establish themselves with. But, I think very soon you have to start looking at what is ahead. The other thing I think is one of the more important research tools is the telephone or the keyboard, the email. Really, don't be afraid to ask colleagues questions. Sometimes … don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out some methodology. Pick up the phone, send an email out and ask how to do it and that will move you along so fast. I've seen so many people struggle trying to figure out how to do something when they could've just picked up the phone and then just move their work ahead quickly. So that would be another piece of advice. 

Shafer: 

I'm going to do a time check with folks. We have about a half an hour. Let's do some questions. I have a couple things left I want to ask the group but let's take some questions from here in the room and, of course, we will start with Administrator's prerogative to and ask Dr. Jacobs-Young to open the questions. 

Jacobs-Young: 

Once again thank you all so much. We've heard reinventing and evolving continuing to move with the science. If I were a young scientist out there I would be -- not young because they don't want them reinventing at the beginning. I heard that. If I'm a scientist out there and I see that the science is moving in a different direction tell, me how do you start the reinvention? Do you go take a training class? Do you go spend time in another laboratory? How do I do this if I am someone who knows that I need to grow in another direction? Where do I start? 

Shafer: 

Leon, you've talked about reinventing yourself several times what is the process that you have used? 

Kochian: 

I think one thing that I have learned and it was kind of pounded into me for my major professor because he was Australian and he thought that American graduate students were wimps because we were so dependent on classwork and formal coursework. As you pointed out you're going to have to continue learning your whole career and you are not going to have that security blanket. 

I think one thing is young scientists have to learn to, #1 read the literature and keep up with the literature and use it to educate yourself at least intellectually. When it comes to techniques there are -- I think early on I did take a couple of these workshops in molecular biology and I also brought in a molecular post-doc to teach me and as I got busier and busier you don't have the luxuries of doing more formal training. There's many different avenues and I don't know all of them but particularly as you get more senior I don't work in the lab but I still have had to learn as I have moved into root phenotyping and phenomics. I hired my first engineering post-doc. I'm learning from him bringing in an engineer together with biologists has been a great new experience. There's many ways to do this and, of course, it depends on the level -- I don't need the hands-on experience. I don't have the time but I'd like to but I need to be able to understand what they are doing. So, there are some avenues. 

Shafer: Don? Ways to reinvent yourself? 

Ort: 

I think Leon's covered some of it that I've used personally including taking semester  courses which you are able to do at universities. Brining in post-docs with new expertise. One hasn't been mentioned is that ARS has a program that we call a sabbatical program. It may be called a training program. I've been on two year-long sabbaticals myself at critical times in my career. Someone in my unit just got back from a year-long sabbatical in England and so this is certainly a prime way to reinvent and really go immerse yourself for a year in an area that you need to learn and do it in a laboratory that does it better than anyplace in the world. 

[Off camera] 

Dr. Shafer? We did have a question of sabbaticals. Someone wrote in and asked that the year of the RL people have been talking about sabbaticals. How many of you have been on sabbaticals. So, thanks Dr. Ort. Have the other two of you?

Shafer: 

That's the disembodied voice of Dr. Sharon Drumm over here. So, others talk about sabbaticals a little bit. Ralph, have you …?

Scorza: 

I've been in an OCED funded fellowship for five months very useful and important. I don't think there's a lot of information out or at least I haven't seen a lot of information about the ARS program. I think it is very important but I think it's something that maybe it is just me but it does not seem to be something that there's a lot of information about but, yeah, I think it would be very important.

Shafer: Questions coming in from the field?

Drumm: I do have another one. With regards to research where do you see ARS in 5 to 10 years? 

Shafer: That's a good one. Don? 

Ort: 

I would call that an unanswerable question. Where I would hope that we would be is where I think we are now in many areas and that is sharing the frontier with other researchers from academic institutions and maybe from the private sector but usually we don't know what the private sector is doing. I suppose the other part of the answer is that I hope and I think that we will have the wisdom to evolve in those areas that are going to exist in five years that we don't know about right now. 

Shafer: Ralph, Can you look in a crystal ball and anticipate some of those areas? 

Scorza:

The general areas of climate etc. But I think if you can predict where you are going to be in five years you are already behind because if you can predict it, it's known. But what I think we need to be looking at is -- we can't really predict. I think we have to do good research and always try and be on the edge of what's coming next or make what's coming next. What's coming next? I don't really know what it's going to be and I think if I did know what's going to be it wouldn't really be that critical. It would be, well everybody knows that. But I'll tell you one thing is very interesting. We are working with NASA developing fruit trees that can be used for the Mars mission, plums in space. But working with NASA you don't really know what's going to come out of that kind of research. And, I think that's where I say do something that you feel is new and is beyond or different from what other people are doing, because that's going to lead you and the agency to where it needs to be in the future, in five years from now. 

Shafer: 

Leon, you mentioned bringing in an engineer, somebody on staff with the kind of expertise you have not had in your group before. You must have some sense of where you see that going. 

Kochian: 

Right, exactly. Again what I am thinking about as not new. It's kind of an extension and expansion of what's going on since genomics began which was that there was a novel bringing together of computer scientists and molecular biologists and chemists and we see what's come from that but we are seeing in all of our areas of research the problems are so complex and these kinds of systems approaches are the way they need to be approached … Don's work with climate change and photosynthesis, my work on root and breeding for root traits through phenotyping and genotyping and so ARS is going to need to continue to get better at it, continue to expand in the area of truly multidisciplinary research and particularly try to bring together … we have tremendous expertise at ARS maybe under-utilized, particularly in phenomics and phenotyping and in field phenotyping we've got the resources. So, I think those are areas I talk to Ed Butler a lot, he's kind of a visionary with big experience bringing together engineers and physicists and computer scientists with biologists and beyond. 

Shafer:

Let's take another question here in the room. Doug Karlen? 

Karlen:

The question I would like to propose to you is the one that came out of our discussion this morning with the various young scientists and award winners. How does ARS position ourselves better -- not really compete with but in contrast to for example it came out EPA says they are the water use efficiency expert. DOE comes forward and says they are a sustainability expert. These are things that ARS researchers and our programs are very strong in. How do we position ourselves more effectively in working with other agencies and the private sector for that matter and get credit for what we are really good at. 

Shafer: Who wants to take them on?

Ort: Why don't you take it, Steve?

Shafer: In this case, no one is interested in anything I have to say. What do you think?

Kochian: 

Well, I will talk about one component of and we talked about this quite a bit this morning that ARS is doing wonderful research that they sometimes don't get credit for and we are all in a difficult situation. I think in my opinion as a research agency that is a very small percentage of a large department that is not research, I think sometimes we find it harder to promote our accomplishments it seems like where a university can just do whatever they want, if the president wants to and we can't. I'm sure the administrator knows what I'm talking about but I guess we would ask to continue to try to work with the department to enable us to promote our work. When I joined ARS 30 years ago I heard they were the best kept secret in the government and we still say that. We are trying. We are making efforts and again with reduced budgets but it is frustrating when I hear that other agencies are labeling themselves or actually these are in areas where they probably don't have the expertise or are probably depending on ARS for some of that expertise. So it's a vague answer to a problem that is important. I don't know what the solutions are. 

Shafer: Don, anything to add to that? 

Ort: 

Well, maybe just amplify on it. Most of the ARS accomplishments that come out of my location in Urbana, they get advertised by the University not by ARS. My job is to make sure that when those news releases come out at the university it says they were done by ARS scientists and I make sure that happens. But something is broken, right. Something's broken when we can't do that in our own agency or the procedure to do it take so long that by the time the press release comes out or the announcement comes out, it's not news anymore. Some number of news releases that come out of universities get picked up, they get picked up the New York Times and the more times the word ARS agricultural research service shows up in the Washington Post and the New York Times, the more that we get known. 

One thing that I always say is that ARS is a big land-grant university without an English department. And we are. ARS has a budget of about 1.4 billion. University of Illinois has a budget of 1.4 billon. We have 2,000 SYs, University of Illinois has 2,000 faculty and so we don't have students. We don't have an English department we are a big land-grant university. But we're decentralized and I think part of the cost of decentralization as the things that we are talking about here. 

Shafer: Ralph? Any thought? 

Scorza: 

Well, I just think it's the responsibility also of the individual scientist to make sure that when they collaborate with one of these other organizations that they make sure that what get said about that organization's research includes what ARS says. Small thing, I agree with what you both are saying but maybe it's another small thing that if every scientist knows that they have a stake in getting ARS out there -- I think most of us do but I don't know how often we really act on it, you know, "I've read this over and this has to have an ARS collaboration in there as part of the publication," so. I think we could all help out with that. 

Shafer: We have another question. Sally Schneider? 

Schneider: 

We hear a lot about succession planning. What would you tell your grandchildren and your grandchildren's friends about a career in science and furthermore about the science career in ARS? 

Shafer:

How many of you … Do you all have children? All of you do. Good. Any grandchildren? What are you going to tell them two or three generations out? 

Ort: My kids are lawyers. 

Shafer: I was -- I withdraw the question. [Laughter]. 

Ort: 

I don't know about generation planning from the standpoint of whether it does down through families. Certainly a lot of the issues that the next generation and their children or grandchildren are going to meet and I'm afraid that many of them are going to be truly dramatic. They are going to have to have – if they can be answered and if we can live with them, it's going to be technological and scientific answers that make that possible. There is certainly the need for more people to go into -- can we do things about it as scientists? And, I think many of us are involved in various kinds of outreach where we are trying to get STEM into lower levels and particularly gender-based things where we are losing a lot of the young girls in seventh and eighth grade and so one of the scientists from my unit who won the ODEO award this year runs a camp every summer for seventh and eighth grade girls to try to plug the leak in the pipe. 

Shafer: Ralph? 

Scorza: 

 I think we are entering an age now when science and agriculture is unfortunately maybe going to be very important in the future of our planet. Both in feeding people and security, security of the planet. So I think that there's going to be more young people potentially looking at agriculture. I think if we can also integrate agricultural research into other fields sometimes I wonder if we should have more of our scientists going to meetings in the medical field or meetings even in the military because they are really quite advanced in technology. I think that integration of agricultural research with these other research fields: computerization, nanotechnology will then bring a bigger basket of interest to young people in the future. But, I think definitely agriculture in the future is going to be something that will catch more young people's attention. 

Shafer: I hope that's true. Leon? 

Kochian: 

It's interesting in that we are at a point in time where maybe agriculture is going to have to come to the rescue with food security and how we are going to produce the food we are going to have to produce in the face of climate change and running out of -- we are using all the best lands. And the other thing, and again this is a concern I have so when you're talking about the next generation I am seeing people that don't want to go into research at least on the academic side because the funding is so bad they're not going to get grants they are not going to get tenure. That certainly makes ARS attractive but I am concerned over all. We are at a point in our history where agricultural research is more important than ever before and we need to find a way to get the message out. I like what Ralph was saying, because we're becoming a much more multidisciplinary type of research and maybe potential to piggyback on with physics and chemistry and engineering astronomy in terms of these where maybe this will be a way to bring more funding together. These are issues that are really serious and I'm not sure -- they are beyond my pay grade. 

Shafer: How we doing on questions from the field? 

Drumm: First is Dr. Scorza, can we see any of your art anywhere? 

Shafer: I was thinking that myself. Where do we see it?

Scorza: 

I have a website: ralphscorsastudios.com. It's an old website cause I haven't had time to work on it. 

Drumm: OK, great. I have another one that is interesting. Who is your hero? 

Shafer: Oh, that's always an interesting question. Leon, who is your hero?

Kochian: 

Well, they are a couple of obvious ones but they are the ones … Nikola Tesla I thought was an underappreciated genius and now I think I'm in the Telsa cohort group for the year of the RL. Just such a visionary scientist, almost mystical qualities. My dad kind of a frustrated engineer. He was a toolmaker so he got … I think he influenced me in terms of science. He's the one that turned me onto Tesla and, Albert Einstein. I loved reading about him when I was young and his life. He was a very slow methodical thinker, early in his life I think they thought he was slow. So, those were two of the greatest minds of modern time so they are kind of easy people to admire. 

Shafer: Don, any heroes?

Ort: 

Well, I suppose historical/biological heroes, it would be Darwin because evolution is so important to everything we do and think about. –But I guess a bit closer to home I suppose my scientific hero from the standpoint of someone that I think about "what would he do in this situation?" was Norman Good who I did my PhD with. He was at Michigan State and most of you guys have never heard of Norman Good except that you know of the good buffers. He's the guy who invented tricine and HEAPS and MES all al of these things which incidentally Michigan State never made a penny out of that because they thought he was nuts and they never patented any of it. 

Shafer: Ralph?

Scorza: 

I don't really -- I can't pick out one person that's a hero. There are so many great scientists and in fact, I guess my heroes are people who have really changed paradigms. I think Darwin would be one but even in art. Some of the Impressionist changed the whole face of art so anybody I'm inspired by people who have changed things radically. There's a host of those people but that's generally who I look up to as heroes. 

Shafer: Great. Marlen Eve?

Eve: 

When you all started your careers popular information was kind of filtered through the anchorman on the evening news and now anyone with a Twitter account or Google is an expert. I'm wondering how the way you communicate your science is changed over time and what advice you would give to young scientists starting out on how to better communicate science in the face of the Internet age and accessed information. 

Shafer: Who wants to start with that one?

Kochian: 

It is. It's an interesting time and again I have to admit I have not kept up with Twitter. I don't tweet. I mean obviously scientifically we now get our information through the Internet, our journals and everything and that's wonderful and we can communicate through the Internet and I know I haven't been taking advantage of it and it's something we need to do a better job on and I'm wondering if maybe as scientists we need a little bit of training in what are the opportunities out there particularly for us older scientists. I mean, we all keep up computationally with things but some of the communication, I know I haven't. I'm kind of old-fashioned in that I communicate by publications and giving talks. I like to talk and I'll take anywhere but I think we have these new forums, blogs, etc. that ARS Information Staff is using and I think using them effectively. The scientists, some are YouTube videos people are using a lot of now to get information out, technical information. I haven't. So you can see there's a lot of things out there that I have to admit I haven't done.

Shafer: Don, What are your thoughts on communication these days?

Ort:

 I would guess I would say fundamentally that communication between and among scientists hasn't changed. It's much, much faster than it used to be. Publication is faster than everything is accessible without going to the library but fundamentally the communication between scientists is the way it has been in the past and that's peer reviewed publications, scientific meetings and talks. I think what has changed is the extent to which we have the opportunity to communicate outside of our field to other scientists and to communicate with people that are not scientists and that's a new skill set. It's a skill set of learning to tell a story rather than knowing how to present data. It's something I've enjoyed learning I don't know how good I am at it but I've enjoyed doing it and I understand it's important and I look for opportunities to do it. 

Shafer: Thoughts on communication, Ralph? 

Scorza: 

I think it's real important and it has changed quite a bit and I think people are really looking for reliable information because there's so much on the web that is not very reliable. It's a question of your skills in that area and it's a question of how much time you have to do that. That's a really -- for me that's been something that has been difficult. I go through the ARS information staff and they have really helped a lot getting that information out in different forms. But I do think it's something that especially young scientists will be doing more than we have done for sure. That brings up the question of what can be done in ARS by individual scientists to get the word out. I think that's something that I'm sure is not clear to young scientists. What can they do? Can they have their own Twitter account etc., I think that would move things forward if they knew. 

Shafer: 

Well to communication I'll make one observation as a follow up, Marlen. In the interest of full disclosure of these guys knew some of the questions that I was going to be asking but not all of them and certainly did not know what questions would be coming in from here in the room or the field but one of the things that I have noticed over the last hour is what good communicators all three of them are. In terms of speaking in plain language, answers are succinct, to the point I think this is again a hallmark of some extremely successful scientists. The ability to do that. To organize their thoughts and get them out that way is really a great talent. All three of these fellows have demonstrated that. 

I am going to take one more question form the Northeast area director, Dariuz Swietlik. And then I've got one more question that I'm going to ask and then we'll wrap it up. 

Darius:

My question is -- you've obviously been very successful. To what extent do you think that success is due to your superb technical knowledge, to what extent is because of your leadership skills, social skills, communication skills -- could you elaborate on that?

Kochian: Yes. 

Shafer: See what I told you? They are very succinct. [Laughter]

Kochian: 

Everybody is different. You can probably get 3 different answers and I don't know if I'm superb at anything. For me there is many different paths to whatever you want to call success or at least making the Hall of Fame. For me I consider myself a generalist. I'm pretty good at a lot of things and I'm not great at anything and I can juggle a lot of different things. I think you have to know your strengths and play to them. I'm not a technologist but I also learned early you've got to know the literature and I always made sure I know the literature in the important areas and that's getting harder because the literature is growing because of the different areas. 

I think communication is really important both with people when you are mentoring and how to get through to them but also how to get through to your audience with science. As Don was saying when we give a talk or publish a paper I consider that I'm telling a story. So, it's got to be factual and accurate and logical but you are also want to get their interest. It's got to have a theme and why you do this and how you did it but in a way and in the context of how you have made a contribution to society in a way that is interesting. So I guess I will stop there. 

Shafer: Don? 

Ort: 

I guess if I were to try to trace back what is the single thing that I can trace back to my career that has been important to whatever success I have had it goes back to Norman Good who is a person I really admire and what he would always ask me as a grad student and the other grad students in the lab was "What's your question?" It was always, "what's your question" and once you had a question out that he was satisfied with then "how are you going to approach this experimentally?" So all the post-docs and students in my group know when they come to me, I'm going to ask, "What's your hypothesis?" Then we are going to work on that hypothesis until it's really a significant hypothesis and asks an important question then can it be tested experimentally? To me it's really understanding and implementing what is the scientific method that I have done that has been successful for me and my group.

Scorza: 

I would say in my case that it is persistence. When I do go through the process of finding a problem and realizing what something needs to be done I really am persistent in pursuing that. And then persistent in getting that from a research aspect or research question, a research solution to a product. I really like to see the whole process go through from start to finish. I would say the one quality that I have that has really helped me is a dogged persistence in getting from the start to finish in a project. It's been something that has helped me out. 

Shafer: 

We are down to just a couple minutes left and I've got to take a minute or two to acknowledge some folks that work very hard behind the scenes. But, I do have one last thing that I want to ask of each of you and I will ask you to be –succinct because of the time. And, that is you have the administrator, you've got both of the associate administrators, you've got some of the deputy administrators in the room keep it clean. What message do you have for the leadership of ARS in closing? What would you like to say to us?

Kochian:

Well, it's clear we've mentioned this before. Society is poised at a critical juncture in terms of global food security and so ARS is more important than ever probably doubled or squared and cubed. We have tremendous responsibility there as an agency but I guess my other part of that message is that we all understand the funding constraints that are there now. The worst I've seen in my 30 years and I don't know if it's going to get better. So, if we are operating within those constraints I know you were talking about adding more SYs, I guess I want to make sure that those SYs are funded appropriately. Particularly for some of this bigger, multidisciplinary work. We can't be all things to all people so we have to think about that. How do we keep a reasonable level of funding, so we can do high-quality work? 

Shafer: Don, quickly. What message to you have for us? 

Ort: 

I guess I would just endorse something that ARS is already thinking about and that is to meet these challenges that Leon is talking about it's –not going to be met by the three of us it's going to be met by the next cohort that's hired. We really do need to hire the best and the brightest so I really challenge the leadership to think what are the obstacles in the way of doing that and how are we going to mount those obstacles? Those have things that we have talked about a lot this morning and I think the details will come back to you about thought that we had. 

Shafer: Good, advice. Ralph?

Scorza: 

I would say as the administration looks at new policies and procedures and things that can and maybe perhaps should be done in the agency that the question always to be asked is how will this help the science or how will it hinder the science and try and reduce as much as possible those that will –hinder is it that important that we need to do or how will it help science. Those are the two things I think as we go through, we really need to focus on the science. 

Shafer: 

It's time to wrap this up. We spent the last 90 minutes or so with really some of ARS's truly greatest science leaders and leaders in every sense of the word on that. I have to tell you of all the things I get to do this is the best gig in the agency getting to do this. This is a great deal of fun for me. There is a list of people here I need to thank. First, I certainly thank the audience, all of you for participating and anybody who is watching out there in the field we appreciate you taking the time and participating in this. I thank certainly the people who have sent in questions and those of you here in the room who contribute it's great to have people in the room, it does add energy into the conversation. A number of folks who have worked behind the scenes bringing this together—Leon Valdez, Brittany Krause, all of the other members of the performance management and award staff. Tony Bouldin, the staff from the USDA broadcast center thank you very much and Sharon Drumm and Colette Wood spent a lot of time behind-the-scenes on the logistics putting this together. 

I want to thank Chavonda, the ARS administrator, Dr. Chavonda Jacobs-Young, for giving us the opportunity to do this and not just keeping it within the administrators council but expanding the opportunity for this conversation. I hope this stimulates a lot of discussion around here and in the field in the coming days. 

Of course I want to think the Hall of Fame inductees. Dr. Ralph Scorza, Dr. Don Ort, Dr. Leon Kochian and Scott Yates who's notes -- these guys kept the conversation rolling I didn't really even have much opportunity to refer to Dr. Yates's material. I guess in closing I would just like to -- on a personal note thank all four of you for choosing, and it is a choice, for choosing to devote your talents and your energy and your creativity to a career of 30 years and more with the Agricultural Research Service. You make us all look good and I'm very grateful to you for making the choice to come to work for ARS and stay with us so thank you very much. That's it for this year's science talk and with luck I will get to do this again next year but that's up to Chavonda, of course. I want to thank everybody for participating, thanks everybody in the field and everybody have a good day. Thanks. 

[Applause]