Pioneer Member

Chris Somerville – In 1985 DeLill invited me to serve on the NSF Eukaryotic Genetics panel. By that time Shauna Somerville and I had published about 20 papers on Arabidopsis genetics and Elliot Meyerowitz, Dave Meinke and Maarten Koornneef and a few others were also extolling the virtues of Arabidopsis. I think DeLill had already envisioned that Arabidopsis would become an important model system and was very supportive of the idea. Her panels included many of the people who contributed to the creation of modern biology, so it was always very exciting and educational for me to participate in her panel meetings. I particularly recall interesting discussions with Jack Szostak who was a font of revolutionary questions and ideas, then and now. DeLill helped me understand how the US funding agencies worked and through her I also became acquainted with her friends and colleagues Mary Clutter and Machi Dilworth who also became champions for Arabidopsis in the NSF and USDA. With their advice, and NSF support, a small group that included me started organizing the Arabidopsis community by creating a steering committee, organizing meetings, and setting up resources like the stock center and the databases. Ultimately they helped us convince the Director of NSF to allocate the roughly $74M to sequence the Arabidopsis genome. Although DeLill and colleagues were always very committed to ensuring that NSF policies and practices were followed, they were very helpful in helping us understand how to work within the system. I came to think of DeLill, Mary and Machi and others at NSF as collaborators. Now I work in philanthropy, allocating funding for biomedical R&D, and I am frequently reminded of the thoughtful encouragement and support that DeLill provided to my friends and me when we were trying to change the paradigm.